HSBC consolidates IT to slash costs

HSBC hopes to generate savings with standardisation

HSBC Bank is placing its bets on a technology consolidation scheme to boost revenue as group profit in the first trading quarter plunged.

The bank reported a 28 per cent fall in profit for the period due to a $14bn (£7.1bn) hit caused by exposure to bad debt. The loss comes despite an increase in total operating income to $42.9bn (£21.7bn), an increase of two per cent on the $42bn (£21.3bn) posted in the first half of last year.

To help mitigate the effects of its exposure to the credit crunch, the bank launched a programme, ‘One HSBC’, which aims to increase the bank’s proceeds and reduce costs by standardising technology in the developed markets in which it operates.

“One HSBC is our programme to re-engineer the company so that wherever possible we use global systems which provide leading customer experience and also drive down the cost of production,” said group chief executive Michael Geoghegan.

Geoghegan said results from the standardisation programme so far include reduction of service interruptions by half, as well as decrease of contact centre call times for customers’ most frequent transactions and improvement of collection service through holistic customer level views compared to individual account outlooks.

The bank claims that approximately three quarters of its global credit card base is now running on the One HSBC cards platform. Conversions are expected to take place in India and Indonesia this year.

“Deploying One HSBC systems in a country as a fully integrated package is particularly beneficial in our emerging markets because the suite reduces bespoke software costs as well as producing operating benefits,” said Geoghegan.