052207: 4 more HSBC wealth management centers up this year

By Leah B. del Castillo

Special Projects Editor

HSBC this year aims to open four more wealth management centers for the “mass affluent” of the country, in addition to the 16 currently existing in Metro Manila, Cebu and Davao. Targetting those with at least P4 million being managed by the global bank, the HSBC Premier Centre allows customers to move around the world, and still bank with HSBC through the facility’s “seamless” international network. Clients of HSBC’s Premiere Centre in any one city are afforded the same privileges and services in other Premiere Centres in any other place in the world. Currently, there are 250 such centers in 35 countries. Clients are assigned a “relationship manager” in the city where they bank—the relationship manager’s primary task is to provide customers personalized wealth management service. The bank assures that this relationship manager may be reached by a particular client from any part of the globe. Worldwide, there are 4,000 relationship managers and 2,500 support staff. In the Philippines, there are 60 such relationship managers. Explaining the P4-million minimum in assets one must have with the bank in order to become an HSBC Premier customer, HSBC Philippines deputy CEO Martin Cook said that more and more Filipino individuals would fall under this category, given their increasing technological savvy, penchant for travel, and existing family and personal relations abroad. In this sense, the Philippines has become a truly “global country” whose mass affluent’s financial needs could be served best by any of the Premier Centers worldwide, Cook said in a briefing in Makati City on Monday. “That is something no other bank would do for you,” he said.

 

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/05222007/headlines06.html