Clearing bank of the year: HSBC

Risk Asia Awards 2025

Clement Cordier, HSBC

Asia’s market for client clearing is a competitive space, with several global banks aggressively building up their business in the region. HSBC stands out this year for its ability to position itself as a regional thought leader, rather than merely another international player trying to pick up business.

A couple of years ago, a prominent financial institution was looking at establishing a new trading hub in Singapore. The company in question assessed the services at several other global banks before deciding to use HSBC as its primary clearing bank. The deciding factor was the depth of local coverage that HSBC was able to offer.

“While other banks could offer similar services, a lot of these came out of Europe, which would cause additional cross-border complications for us,” says the regional chief operating officer of the institution. “In Asia, HSBC’s breadth of coverage, the bank’s strong relationship with key industry players and the ability to pull together thought leadership have been key differentiators for us.”

Such a level of service has allowed this particular institution to get comfortable with managing its clearing relationship in Asia through a single partner, rather than managing fragmented clearing positions across multiple banks.

The high level of service that HSBC provides to clients in Asia has also encouraged many to choose the bank as their number one partner for clearing.

“Every time we have an issue or we need to clarify some points with regards to clearing, the team at HSBC is very responsive,” says the chief operating officer of another regional institution. “They do not give us the impression that this is not an HSBC problem, but they try to help us as much as they can. They will direct us to people who we can talk to, and provide guidance for those areas that still lack clarity or certainty.”

HSBC is keen to play a prominent role in the proactive development of Asia’s market, as is shown by some of the landmark initiatives it has been involved with in recent years.

“Beyond the services that we provide for clients, we have also adopted a leadership position for market development. This is why many regulators and infrastructure providers see us as the go-to bank for new products that they want to launch,” says Clement Cordier, head of derivatives clearing services, Asia at HSBC.

China

Few markets demonstrate HSBC’s leadership credentials in client clearing as much as China does.

Last year, HSBC became the first clearing broker to provide support for offshore Chinese sovereign bonds to be used as collateral, partnering with LCH SwapClear in order to do so.

HSBC was also in the first batch of clearing brokers to accept onshore Chinese government bonds (CGBs), in partnership with Hong Kong Exchange (HKEX) OTC Clear.

“Risk mitigation efforts has rekindled interest in RMB internationalisation. This is a trend that we have been seeing for some time, but it has been particularly noticeable this year,” says Cordier.

US president Donald Trump initiated a new tariff policy at the start of April, threatening the dollar’s status as a safe haven for investors and prompting many to search around for alternatives to the greenback.

“We are in a unique position to catch some of these flows from de-dollarisation as clients search for diversification and optimisation of financing solutions,” says Cordier.

Providing support for CGBs has been a vital component of this. HSBC deserves recognition for the effort that it has put in to get this far.

“These kinds of things don’t happen overnight,” says Cordier. “HSBC has high standards of control and evaluation. We have to go through our own internal approval processes, and then manage that with client expectations.”

He adds that it’s not just about being able to accept this kind of collateral, but also about looking at how else the clients can be serviced throughout the value chain.

“We want to be able to demonstrate full end-to-end coverage, whether that is for a swap trade onshore in China or an offshore client who trades with our international business in Hong Kong,” says Cordier.

Tokenised bonds

HSBC’s work in promoting internationalisation of renminbi is far from over. The bank is now investigating whether a digital tokenised version of CGB collateral could be posted, which would further improve clearing efficiency for HSBC’s clients.

“Industry initiatives on the speed at which collateral moves are still nascent, but the shocks that we saw back in April [when the US launched its new tariff policy] has placed renewed importance on this,” says Cordier. “This is an opportunity for us to take a leadership role once again, providing a workable solution for both ourselves as a bank and our clearing clients.”

Cordier says that HSBC is currently engaged in some of early discussions about how this might work.

“If we can support a tokenised version of CGBs, or other types of products, then clients can move this collateral in seconds, not in days. This becomes a really compelling proposition,” says Cordier.