Global banking behemoth HSBC is reviewing its New Zealand retail banking operations with a sale one of a number of options under consideration.
“Like many organisations, HSBC continually engages in business reviews to optimize our network operations for the long-term. We are currently reviewing the strategic options with respect to our retail banking business in New Zealand. HSBC’s wholesale business and other operations in New Zealand are not impacted by this review," an HSBC NZ spokesman told interest.co.nz.
HSBC's NZ retail banking offering is known as HSBC Premier. A sale is one of the options being considered.
HSBC's NZ wholesale banking business includes corporate lending, global trade and receivables finance, global payment services, financial institutions and government business, a sub-custody business and global markets and investment banking services.
As of June 30, HSBC NZ held $4.4 billion worth of customer deposits and $1.8 billion of residential mortgages. Its total gross lending stood at $4.3 billion and total assets at $7.7 billion. For the six months to June HSBC NZ's unaudited profit was $15.8 million.
HSBC this week sold its Canadian unit to Royal Bank of Canada for US$10 billion. HSBC also sold its French and US retail operations last year, agreed to sell its Russian unit in July, and in November said it will merge its Omani unit with local lender Sohar International. This comes against the backdrop of calls from HSBC shareholder Ping An Insurance Group for a break-up of the global group.
News of HSBC reviewing its NZ retail banking operations comes with the Reserve Bank reviewing its policy for branches of overseas banks. In August interest.co.nz reported HSBC could be a high profile casualty of the Reserve Bank's proposals to make banks operating in NZ as branches of overseas banks quit retail banking.
HSBC established a branch in NZ in 1987 becoming the first overseas bank branch to be registered here. HSBC operates in NZ as a branch of the Hong Kong-based Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd, with its ultimate non-bank holding company being HSBC Holdings PLC of the United Kingdom.
Previous Financial Times reports of HSBC potentially selling the group's NZ business in 2012 and again in 2020 amounted to nothing.
8 Comments
I used to have a NZ HSBC Premier account & an Oz HSBC account. The Oz bank was much easier to deal with.
The best thing about HSBC was their online international currency accounts and transfers, so easy & good Fx rates. Premier customers also got cheaper mortgage rates. The worst thing was their TD rates being always the lowest of the major banks, when I queried this they told me it was because of their good credit rating (rofl).
Just my opinion, but HSBC's retail presence in NZ (like Aus) has only really been a sweetener to attract the business banking of the Chinese diaspora, and therefore get a foothold in the NZ corporate banking sector. That has now been achieved and, like Aus et al., it's now time to get back to business. Is there any value in their NZ retail business? The first attempt to sell failed. Have things changed? In my view they've only got worse..... for HSBC.
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