Celebrating the 20th anniversary of its operations in Taiwan yesterday, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp (HSBC), the second largest foreign financial institution in Taiwan, said it has set a target to grow its business here by fivefold in the next five years.
"We started here in Taipei 20 years ago -- which is a comparatively short history, as we started in Hong Kong and Shanghai 140 years ago," Paul Leech, CEO of HSBC Taiwan, said during the celebration ceremony. "But the [Taiwan] market is increasingly important to us."
Melody Chuang (莊博琪), HSBC's head of marketing, said that the bank considers Taiwan one of its five most important markets, and will therefore expand its budget and resources here by fivefold to meet its five-year target.
For the first half of the year, HSBC posted a turnover of NT$6.16 billion, a 12 percent increase from the same period last year, and saw net profit of NT$1.43 billion -- a 36 percent jump.
Chuang said the trend in banking is to design products in accordance with customers' needs. The bank has therefore restructured its consumer and corporate banking units to be more customer-oriented, Chuang said. One major adjustment is that the bank now assigns three employees -- two financial management specialists and one public relations manager -- to serve one customer.
Dorothy Tao (陶尊芷), senior vice president of HSBC Taiwan's human resources division, said the company is aggressively recruiting new blood, hoping to increase its staff at its eight branches here from about 1,800 to 5,000 within five years.
Martin Spurling, deputy CEO and senior vice president of HSBC Taiwan's personal financial services division, told the Taipei Times that HSBC's relatively small number of branches is "not a problem" and that they will implement their strategy through their existing branches.
As the government regulates expansion of foreign banks, Spurling said that HSBC is adopting the "mobile desk" business model -- visiting customers instead of waiting for them to walk in -- and will utilize its call center and online service, which will launch soon.
One of the main difficulties the bank encounters here is recruitment, given the fierce competition from a large number of players in a limited market, he said.
The second difficulty Spurling pointed out is the regulatory environment. He cited in particular a recent government proposal to trim the newly-established Financial Supervisory Commission's (FSC) authority.
The Cabinet last week approved a draft bill that would return financial policymaking rights to the Ministry of Finance from the FSC, and proposed a two-year grace period for the changes to take effect.
Spurling said the Ministry and FSC are wrangling over who will set financial policy, "which is a shame because what the FSC are doing is very good."
The government is trying to improve the banking sector by promoting mergers between banks.
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