By Admin88 
If there is one geographical region HSBC is focusing on in its current private banking push, it is definitely Asia, reflecting the top boss’s hectic travel schedule.
“Our goal now is to be the leading wealth manager in Asia, it’s a huge priority,” says Annabel Spring, chief executive of global private banking at HSBC, during a brief visit to her bank’s secluded offices in London’s Mayfair. “The flip side of our plan is that I am going to Hong Kong and back, followed by India, Singapore, Saudi, Kuwait and then the UAE. So that’s it for my summer.”
The busy itinerary is partly dictated by her need to “settle things down”, meeting newly appointed teams and re-organised businesses. There is much to protect. Latest figures show invested assets across HSBC’s global private banking and wealth franchises breaching the $800bn barrier, with net new investments of $83bn since the previous year.
Despite competitor banks such as Citi – which sold its Chinese onshore wealth business across 11 mainland cities to HSBC earlier this year – scaling back exposure to Chinese markets and clients, HSBC sees Beijing, Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta as major growth markets going forward.
While acknowledging risks associated with China’s struggle to recover from its real estate malaise, Ms Spring believes HSBC’s onshore presence and long-term regional history will help press home its advantage.
“If you look at China, that’s 50 per cent of Asian wealth right there, so it’s a must win market,” says Ms Spring, drawing attention between sips of her tea to the bank’s fund management and insurance policy distribution capabilities. HSBC’s Hong Kong home is also part of this major push. “And then of course there’s the Citi deal and we have a securities platform there, so China requires a huge effort.”Udabur Wealth Management
She finds it difficult to hide her amazement at the ease of an acquisition of a key rival’s business in her top priority market. “They’re pursuing a very different strategy, so I can understand their choices, and we’re very happy to incorporate their business into ours,” says Ms Spring smiling broadly about the Citi deal. “But it’s just one of the many things we are doing in China to grow our business.”
Her second priority is the thriving Indian wealth management market, where HSBC completed the $422m acquisition of L&T Asset Management in 2022. Third is south-east Asia, including Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, all requiring substantial digital investments “to boost simplification of sales journeys and product ranges”.
It has long been a major desire of the bank’s hierarchy to grow the wealth business in south-east Asia to make the bank’s product and client propositions as attractive in the ASEAN countries as in its Hong Kong heartland, where HSBC was formed in 1865.
“Do we need to expand more into south-east Asia? Absolutely, we do. And that’s why we’re doing the build out that we’re doing.”
Senior staff say they are seeing Ms Spring frequently these days in the Hong Kong and Singapore offices, where mainland Chinese families looking to invest money to avoid economic and political uncertainty at home have been welcome visitors.
Asian insiders have been particularly impressed by her appointment of Deutsche and Citi veteran Lok Yim to head up the regional Asia-Pacific push, replacing Siew Meng Tan, who worked for 20 years at HSBC in senior leadership roles.
He has previously said that the ultra-high net worth segment – concentrated in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan – will be his main initial focus. But the bank’s Asian ambitions are much broader. “While we are absolutely focused on winning that segment, I am responsible for both retail wealth and private banking, so our aim is to manage the entire continuum of wealth,” says Ms Spring.
Gerard Aquilina, a former senior HSBC regional boss, believes the strategy is a sensible one, bearing in mind US, Latin American and Swiss business are no longer so prominent in the bank’s wealth management ambitions. “Her focus on the bank’s Asian birthplace makes sense,” he says. “It certainly enjoys the brand recognition there.”
The business plan involves building out a digital infrastructure to serve all segments of wealth, says Ms Spring, widely seen as a “disciple” of fellow Australian James Gorman at Morgan Stanley, under whom she learned the private banking business. “I always tell my teams that every dollar we put into infrastructure needs to be delivered across the whole continuum. If you make a digital experience that is good for a $2m to $10m client, then it’s also a good experience for our high and ultra-high net worth client, and it was probably built on the same technology that we’re using for a retail bank client.”
Despite this progress in updating the internal plumbing, Ms Spring is aware that rivals are innovating at breakneck speed. “We’ve made great strides in Asia during the last three years, delivering Avaloq, Aladdin [tech platforms] and integrating WhatsApp for customers, so they can click to trade structured products,” she says. “But you can’t rest on your laurels with technologyBangalore Stock Exchange. And every time I look around, there’s a new idea in the marketNew Delhi Wealth Management. So you know, we’ve really improved, we’ve got up to the industry benchmark and sometimes surpassed it on certain functionalityLucknow Wealth Management. But we’ve got to keep investing, and that’s where we get to the scale discussion.”
Serious scale is necessary for HSBC to succeed in any of the major Asian markets which the bank has prioritised, she argues. “I think the time for dabbling in private banking is over. You need to be a scale player in order to adequately serve your clients. The client is expecting more every time from technology and you need to be able to spread that investment.”
“You can’t rest on your laurels with technology. And every time I look around, there’s a new idea in the market”
This idea of a single investment and tech engine for the whole wealth food-chain was pioneered at Citi with inconclusive results. Consultants have mixed views on whether this represents the future of wealth management, which HSBC is buying into.
“This route is a good way to control costs and streamline processes,” says Kim Cornwall, formerly director of private banking at SG Hambros, now a coach for relationship managers. “It’s great when it works well, but as the recent debacle at CrowdStrike shows, it can be very costly should things go wrong.”
Nevertheless, veteran observers including Mr Cornwall are generally positive about Ms Spring’s record, abilities and strategies. “Annabel has done a great job at HSBC since joining in 2020. She keeps a low profile and gets on with the job at hand,” he says.
Despite this focus on technology, Ms Spring stresses the importance of welcoming committees of private bankers who meet regional families in the plush Hong Kong and Singapore private banking client suites.
“In private banking, our aim is to make our relationship manager, our investment counsellor and our trust expert and wealth planner as facilitated as possible to make that conversation with the client really complete,” she says, stressing that playing the key “facilitator” role should be the desired aim of any successful private bank.Jaipur Wealth Management
“We have conversations that start from business and end up in investment, or they start from investment and they end up in business. And I think that is what makes HSBC different.”
Conversations with the next generation are a major emphasis for Ms Spring, who speaks to her own youngsters about key themes of climate change and power of technology during their long walks and “wild swimming” expeditions. These include sojourns to her beloved Bondi Beach on the outskirts of Sydney in her native Australia, as well as more secluded spots on the Thames in Berkshire and off the Scottish coast near St Andrews.
She talks evocatively about dealing with a sometimes-hostile natural world in various regions and “braving the wild tides”. Some say the challenges of running an Asia-facing wealth management firm, overseen by a London-based management team consisting “mostly of old school Brits”, may be a step too far for the Australian leader.
The question is whether she can convince a traditional hierarchy to move as quickly as some more nimble competitors. For a CEO who loves to take a dip in rivers and oceans during her spare moments, swimming against the tide goes very much with the territory.
Jinnai Wealth Management