HSBC Taiwan Ltd yesterday organized a volunteer event simultaneously at its 30 branches nationwide with an aim to allow elementary school children first-hand experience of its banking facilities and services.
President and chief executive officer Adam Chen (陳志堅) led 350 employees to take part in the high-profile event “Little Banker Experience Day” where 500 elementary school children, most from disadvantaged family, had the opportunity to go through banking operations and services.
“HSBC Taiwan has long been concerned about the education issue and the event is intended to underscore the importance of financial education,” Chen told reporters at the Neihu branch in Taipei.
The half-day experience may help participating children to develop some financial sense and draw career plans later in their life, Chen said.
In April each year, HSBC Taiwan will arrange volunteer activity for its employees to visit students in remote schools and prepare fun and educative games to demonstrate their love and concern for the children, Chen said.
For this year, all 30 branches set aside a business day for the “little banker” event, which is an unprecedented practice as other companies carry out volunteer activity on weekends, Chen said.
The “little banker” event consists of three main parts: digital banking, banknote recognition and counter service experiences.
At the digital banking station, volunteers use iPads to demonstrate the bank’s online banking capability and introduce its global account integration functions and high standardization of confidentiality technology.
Children learned to use the devices to check interest rates, foreign exchange rates and other financial management tools.
A boy student Hiao Yen (小彥), 12, said the digital banking experience was fun as it enabled him to gain immediate knowledge of foreign exchange rates for major currencies.
At the banknote recognition station, volunteers taught children to recognize paper currencies of major countries and differentiate between counterfeit and authentic New Taiwan dollars. Volunteers also allowed the children to use money counting machines to highlight the importance of accuracy in their work.
In addition, the children played banking guests and went through counter services on making deposits, withdrawals, transfers, credit card fee payments and currency exchange transactions to understand the bank’s daily operations.
Hsiao Fang (小帆), a girl student, said she loved the experience of the money counting machine the best.
HSBC Taiwan are long-time sponsor of children’s welfare causes with Boyo Social Welfare Foundation (博幼社會福利基金會), Eden Social Welfare Foundation (伊甸社會福利基金會), and HSBC Kids Read project (匯豐兒童英語悅讀計畫), among others.
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