HSBC to Scrap More Fees for Hong Kong Retail Customers

A recent sequence of measures to shift to lower-cost, digital-first services for SME and retail customers is largely seen as a response competition from the new virtual banks.

HSBC plans to scrap fees on 26 general banking and transaction services from 1 November, a move that is expected to benefit some 4 million account holders in Hong Kong.

In a statement, the bank said the fee cuts will span deposit and withdrawal of foreign currency banknotes, requests for banker’s reports and documents, passbook replacement, global fund transfers and remittances, among others.

“Today’s cut reflects our commitment to making sure that everyone has the tools they need to thrive financially,” said HSBC regional head of wealth and personal banking for Asia-Pacific, Greg Hingston. “We hope it will also help customers who have been hit hard by Covid-19’s economic fallout.”

Along with the latest fee changes, HSBC will move all its ‘Advance’ account holders to a new integrated product with no minimum deposit requirement called ‘HSBC One’ from 27 October. Other retail accounts will also be converted to HSBC One at a later date. After the change, HSBC Advance will be for customers with a HKD 200,000 minimum balance, or a loan of the same amount.

The latest measures follow HSBC’s June launch of Hong Kong’s first remote business account opening solution for SMEs, and last December’s debut of a mobile account opening service for retail customers.

In mid-2019, the bank also scrapped a number of fees associated with small depositor accounts, soon after making its digital wallet service ‘PayMe’ available to startups and small business customers for the first time.

The sequence of measures to shift to lower-cost, digital-first services for SME and retail customers is largely seen as a response incoming competition from new virtual banks in Hong Kong.

So far, five of the eight new virtual banks have launched full operations, while three more are undergoing testing in preparation for launch.

Additional reporting from SCMP.