Personal Finance

What the...? HSBC

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  • Jun 20th, 2019 4:03 pm
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Dec 11, 2005
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titaniumtux wrote: +1

That's why I prefer to leave banks on almost empty and stuff savings at credit unions, not the other way around.
Credit unions also have to comply with FINTRAC and FACTA so I am not sure what you're talking about.
To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. -- E. E. Cummings
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dmehus wrote:
I repeat: AVOID, AVOID, AVOID HSBC. Do not do business with them. They do not even offer bank-to-bank transfers anymore and have not finished shuttering branches despite closing more than 20% of their branches in six years or so (155 to 129).
Canada is a strategic growth market for HSBC international, they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

I don't have any optics into their internal operations but from a growth perspective, shuttering gigantic high-cost legacy branches when most jobs are moving digital makes a lot of sense IMHO. For physical presence they could look to open up small Tangerine-style "stores" in malls and kiosks. That is the direction I would be moving in if I was them, so I don't find it surprising whatsoever. In fact any bank *NOT* closing large branches today is probably making the wrong moves.
To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. -- E. E. Cummings
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brunes wrote: Credit unions also have to comply with FINTRAC and FACTA so I am not sure what you're talking about.
That's fine. I find credit unions are more pleasant to deal with for parking savings.
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brunes wrote: Canada is a strategic growth market for HSBC international, they aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

I don't have any optics into their internal operations but from a growth perspective, shuttering gigantic high-cost legacy branches when most jobs are moving digital makes a lot of sense IMHO. For physical presence they could look to open up small Tangerine-style "stores" in malls and kiosks. That is the direction I would be moving in if I was them, so I don't find it surprising whatsoever. In fact any bank *NOT* closing large branches today is probably making the wrong moves.
I definitely don't see HSBC opening small kiosks and pop-up locations - it's not their style. They have M&S Bank and a direct bank in the U.K., but the U.K. is their core market. Canada is a second-tier priority growth market for them. And, I'd just add we had HSBC Direct in Canada but they subsequently shuttered that, renaming the Direct Savings Account as Advance Savings Account, which they put into run-off/grandfathered account status. HSBC is notoriously fickle - in 2013, they decided to end all new-to-bank digital account openings, which was publicly reported. In 2015, they took away bank-to-bank transfer functionality despite having closed 20% of their branches. Then, in late 2017 or early 2018, they did an about face and reinstated NTB account openings and Contact Centre management of direct Retail, Advance, and Premier clients.

If anything, I see HSBC shrinking their branch network footprint over the next 5-10 years such that they end up with ~75-100 branches (from their current 129-130), and operating digitally only outside the core markets. But, unless they reinstate bank-to-bank transfers, they're not that compelling.

Cheers,
Doug
Last edited by dmehus on Nov 1st, 2019 9:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Banking & Savings: Tangerine & EQ Bank
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dmehus wrote: I definitely don't see HSBC opening small kiosks and pop-up locations - it's not their style. They have M&S Bank and a direct bank in the U.K., but the U.K. is their core market. Canada is a second-tier priority growth market for them. And, I'd just add we had HSBC Direct in Canada but they subsequently shuttered that, renaming the Direct Savings Account as Advance Savings Account, which they put into run-off/grandfathered account status. HSBC is notoriously fickle - in 2013, they decided to end all new-to-bank account openings. In 2015, they took away bank-to-bank transfer functionality despite having closed 20% of their branches. Then, in late 2017 or early 2018, they did an about face and reinstated NTB account openings and Contact Centre management of direct Retail, Advance, and Premier clients.

If anything, I see HSBC shrinking their branch network footprint over the next 5-10 years such that they end up with ~75-100 branches (from their current 129-130), and operating digitally only outside the core markets. But, unless they reinstate bank-to-bank transfers, they're not that compelling.

Also, I would just add that the Chief Operating Officer in charge of restructuring of the HSBC Direct/Contact Centre strategies and sale of HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc's full service investment advisory business to National Bank Financial as well as the closure of branches, elimination of Saturday branch hours (which they reinstated in the past year), and laying off of ~200 RBWM positions in May 2012 was none other than then-COO & Acting Head of RBWM, Sandra Stuart. She's very much a cost conscious senior leader, not exactly one of growing the business despite her new-ish role as President & CEO.

Cheers,
Doug
At the end of the day, I am not looking to invest in HSBC, so I frankly don't care much about what they do or do not plan to do with their operations and growth, or lack of it.

If they close the branch I use, then I will leave and take my assets completely out of the bank (why would I want to do a bank to bank transfer?)

Until that time, I enjoy their services.

I don't know why anyone would be trying to make decisions on what company to do with based on what you thought of their growth prospects. Who cares? It's not a relevant question for a customer to ask - its an investor question - and as a customer they are not going to give you any inside information for you to judge that or not.
To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. -- E. E. Cummings
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brunes wrote: At the end of the day, I am not looking to invest in HSBC, so I frankly don't care much about what they do or do not plan to do with their operations and growth, or lack of it.

If they close the branch I use, then I will leave and take my assets completely out of the bank (why would I want to do a bank to bank transfer?)

Until that time, I enjoy their services.

I don't know why anyone would be trying to make decisions on what company to do with based on what you thought of their growth prospects. Who cares? It's not a relevant question for a customer to ask - its an investor question - and as a customer they are not going to give you any inside information for you to judge that or not.
Bank to bank transfers allow you to transfer money electronically between your linked accounts; it's typically more efficient to "pull" money rather than push. Advantage to pushing money is that there are no holds when it's deposited elsewhere, but you lose 1-2 days' interest at normal banks/CUs and 3-4 days' interest at Motus Bank/Meridian Credit Union. It's like Me-to-Me Transfers, but that's a proprietary, trademarked term owned by Central 1 for their product.

Growth prospects matter to customers because it's typically highly indicative of how flaky a financial institution in terms of maintaining products, their branch network, and the like, including how committed they are to certain geographies and business lines.

Cheers,
Doug
Banking & Savings: Tangerine & EQ Bank
Credit Cards: American Express SimplyCash, Rogers World Elite MasterCard, Scotiabank Scene+ Visa (was Tangerine Money-Back World MasterCard)
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We recently had to do the same business with several different banks, registering a Power of Attorney and creating new joint accounts. It's a laborious process with all the banks, but HSBC was by far the worst. Most of the others were done in one visit and a follow-up email or phone call. HSBC has so far taken three 90-minute visits over 2 months, filling out at least 20 pages of forms, and it's not done yet.

Furthermore their agent told us that if one of the joint account holders dies and there is a substantial amount on deposit, HSBC might freeze the account and require us to put it through probate even though it has survivorship rights. That would cost us time and money. I hope the agent is wrong, but knowing HSBC I would not be surprised.
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May 11, 2018
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Google “presumption of resulting trust”. Depending on your circumstances that may apply and that could be why they would require probate.
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Kiraly wrote: OK so after three email exchanges with the same employee at my branch, she finally said that the reason is that they don't have any IDs of me on file, and that they require two from all of their account holders. This request makes sense because I opened the account online and never submitted any IDs. So I will drop in to the branch. I just wish that the rep had been upfront about this instead of all secretive.
Thanks, @Kiraly. I agree they should've been more upfront with you. I happened to enquire about their digital account opening process upfront before opening an account because I'm familiar with the requirements and wondered if they'd re-instated their non-face-to-face ID verification procedures from pre-2012 when they used to do digital account opening (from 2012-2017 (roughly inclusive), they eliminated digital account openings entirely to try and drive branch-based business, particularly mutual fund sales and mortgage growth. So when they reinstated them, I asked and they said that they do do a credit check but as the second piece of ID, they require a photo ID; however, since they can't accept it online, it just involves you going into a branch and essentially showing your ID to the Personal Banker who, presumably, ticks a box that you were face-to-face verified and has you sign an updated signature card, if one is needed. I wanted to make it clear that they do not photocopy my ID (that's a deal-breaker for me) and, on that, the representative said they do not.

Cheers,
Doug
Banking & Savings: Tangerine & EQ Bank
Credit Cards: American Express SimplyCash, Rogers World Elite MasterCard, Scotiabank Scene+ Visa (was Tangerine Money-Back World MasterCard)
Investments: Scotia iTRADE | Pension: Municipal Pension Plan
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pedanticus wrote: Google “presumption of resulting trust”. Depending on your circumstances that may apply and that could be why they would require probate.
Yes, I'm aware of some of those thorny legal issues that lawyers love to argue when there is a dispute, but none of those apply in our case. If we have clearly documented statement of intent on a joint account and official wills that says the intent of each of the parties is that the other inherits everything, I can't see how such an issue would arise, or why HSBC would want to make the survivor jump through hoops and pay thousands of dollars extra to free up their money. That's just bad practice.

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