How banks digitalise services to embrace Hong Kong residents’ needs during Covid-19 pandemic

Andy Mahtani, managing director of Maxwell’s Clothiers, a Hong Kong-based bespoke tailoring and clothing company, and his sales representatives, who often travelled to North America and Europe for work before the start of the pandemic, found their business affected – particularly during the past two years.

“The world is slowly reopening now thankfully, but the flight bans and quarantine restrictions in Hong Kong have made it very difficult for our company to revert to business as usual, so we have had to conduct most of our internal and external interactions online,” Mahtani, 54, says.

However, the father-of-three remains optimistic and unfazed – and has been rising to the challenge of the “new normal” in both his professional and personal life.

“I’ve been doing a lot more online banking, even meeting my bank relationship managers via Zoom calls,” he says.

“While of course I prefer a face-to-face meeting, this arrangement works for now. Fortunately, the apps developed by the different financial institutions have been very efficient and user-friendly.”

With two of his children currently living abroad in the United States, Mahtani also needs to use online banking to send them their monthly allowances.

“Technology has made it really easy now,” he says. “With just a few clicks, they get the money in 24 hours, and I don’t even have to go down to the bank branch.”

Throughout the pandemic, HSBC has been continuing to help its customers fulfil their banking needs through a variety of digital initiatives, such as taking the first step to introduce Zoom meetings between the bank and its clients in response to growing demand.

The bank’s Premier and Jade clients, for example, can use Zoom to reach their relationship managers. Meanwhile, all of the banks’ customers can also trade in foreign currencies – which always involves an element of risk – at any time of day through HSBC’s one-stop service platform.

Seismic shift towards digital banking

While the pandemic might have necessitated a digital transformation in some companies, for others, it has created opportunities for exponential growth.

GoGoChart, a Hong Kong-based technology company specialising in mobile and digital marketing, for example, has seen a 265 per cent growth in business in the past year alone.

Daniel Lo, its co-founder, attributes the company’s success to a combination of strategic moves such as investing in the right people and tools, as well as setting up new ventures.

While digital teleconferencing tools including Zoom have helped companies such as GoGoChart ease the transition into working entirely from home, online banking has also been instrumental in ensuring business operations carry on seamlessly with minimal hassle, Lo says.

However, Lo – a self-professed digital native – admits that he was carrying out most of his banking online even before the pandemic.

“And I don’t think I’m alone, actually,” he says. “We have quite a number of both virtual and traditional banks as our clients, so I’ve been able to witness the seismic shift in the digital banking experience.”

“In the last few years, most young people in Hong Kong have moved towards contactless banking, and why not?”

Lo says banks are constantly adding more features to their apps and websites, making banking increasingly convenient and accessible for customers. “Just look at peer-to-peer transfer,” he says. “It used to be extremely slow, but today it’s instantaneous.”

Banks, such as HSBC, are at the forefront of digital transformation. It has made it easy, for example, for customers to buy a unit trust, which invests in a wide range of securities while helping to reduce a customer’s risk through diversification. But HSBC emphasises that all investment involves risk to some degree.

Under the Investment tab in the bank’s mobile app, there is also a new fund comparison feature that allows customers to compare up to five funds based on fund performance, fees and dividend information to help find the unit trust fund that best suits their needs.

HSBC customers are also able to set up video-enabled meetings with its expert “wealth coaches” so they can make inquiries about their financial investments and buy insurance online.

The future is now – and constantly evolving

Rebecca Ng, who was born in Hong Kong, but grew up in New Zealand after moving there at the age of three with her family, says she prefers online banking rather than having to queue up at bank branches. Ng, 28, later worked in the United Kingdom before moving back to the city in 2019.

She says she appreciated being able to open a new bank account from the comfort of her home when she was resettling back in the city of her birth.

“Digital banking is a lot more convenient,” Ng, an account director at a media agency, says. “Going to the bank branches almost always involved long hours waiting in line. Now with the Covid-19 restrictions, it just makes even more sense that contactless transactions are becoming the way forward for safer engagement between banks and their customers.”

At HSBC, the city’s permanent and non-permanent residents, aged 18 to 64, can easily open a new account via the bank’s mobile banking app. Existing HSBC customers can also use the app to conveniently open a new virtual account as long as they hold a stand-alone HSBC current, savings, Time Deposit or investment account.

Ng says she goes online to pay for everything, including her rent, insurance and monthly bills, by using things such as the Faster Payment System (FPS), a real-time bank and e-wallet payment service platform launched in 2018 by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the city’s central banking authority. “I especially love FPS and use it all the time.” she says.

While digital banking security and privacy continue to be a concern, Ng is confident that the safety measures put in place by traditional banks are robust.

Unlike the use of other virtual bank accounts, which require only facial recognition ID to log on, accessing her conventional banking app requires both a face ID and mobile verification. “It takes some effort, but I appreciate the added layer of security,” she says.

In the first half of last year alone, HSBC launched about 130 new digital capabilities and developed 2,500 new features across its global digital platforms.

In Hong Kong, HSBC introduced 100 new digital service “journeys”, or touchpoints, for its customers last year and is following that with another 86 “journeys” during the first half of this year.

The bank says it will continue to roll out innovative new digital solutions to meet evolving banking needs and habits of its increasingly online-savvy customers.