Awards for Excellence 2019
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Dethroning last year’s winner Standard Chartered was no easy feat, but HSBC accomplished it through strong growth and a renewed commitment to the region, which is headed by Martin Tricaud, CEO for the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey.
Its Middle East transaction banking revenue went up 23% over the past year. The bank processed $407 billion of payments in 2018, and financed $43 billion of trade in the Middle East. It has an impressive 15,000 transaction banking clients across the region, serviced by 500 staff.
Its investment in digitization also helped migrate transactions online over the past year, with 40% of trade transactions submitted digitally, up 14% year on year.
Over the past year, HSBC helped the Ali Bin Ali Group, a Qatari retail and distribution company, save money by automating its treasury activities.
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Martin Tricaud |
HSBC also provided a structured financing solution to the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation, for $2 billion, to help reduce outstanding receivables to international oil companies, which supported Egypt’s economic reform programme and helped fulfil IMF obligations for debt reduction.
Another client was Doosan Babcock, the engineering service provider to the energy sector in the UAE, Qatar and Oman. Many of Doosan’s suppliers do not accept card payments due to cost, so HSBC brought in a fintech firm to provide virtual card payments to its suppliers.
HSBC also launched its upgraded corporate banking platform across the region in 2018 and is launching its live chat service, currently only available in the UAE, across the Middle East and North Africa.
Last year, HSBC also became one of the first banks globally to launch facial recognition as an ID mechanism on its corporate mobile banking application. This means of access to the app is now available in 41 countries including Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. Half of its corporate banking clients in the Middle East now use the mobile app, up from 40% in 2017.
Payment values authorised through mobile devices by Middle East clients exceeded $3.6 billion in 2018 – a 9% increase on 2017.
