HSBC Safeguard

HSBC Safeguard is a series of initiatives designed to increase the protection we provide our customers against fraud and financial crime across our global systems and processes. It involves strengthening our ability to combat money laundering and the evasion of sanctions, as these are often the drivers behind many financial crimes. In addition, we will no longer be offering products such as travellers' cheques, as we believe they are no longer a safe enough way for our customers to convert their money. We may review other products like this over time.

To detect criminal activity, our global systems rely on having your most up-to-date information. We use this information to protect your account from potential misuse and provide protection against fraud and financial crime.

Fraud and financial crimes are forms of theft. They tend to involve money or property that are gained illegally, and used in a deceptive or illegal manner to gain benefits from the proceeds. In today's complex economy, financial crimes can take many forms including money laundering, sanction breaches, fraud, tax evasion, terrorist financing, bribery and corruption.

Sanctions are a policy tool which national governments and organisations such as the United Nations and European Union use to constrain and deter perceived threats to their security, or to require international conduct to conform to recognised international standards. Sanctions help stop crimes like terrorism, drug trafficking and arms dealing by imposing restrictions on the business that banks can do with specific people, corporations or countries/regions. The names of these are clearly listed on resources like the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list.

At HSBC, addressing financial crime globally has always been one of our main priorities. However, criminal activity has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, and fraudsters, money launderers and others have attempted to target global networks like banks.

Improving the way we share and manage customer information will help us fight against the risk of financial crime. After all, it's our duty to ensure that you can bank with us safely, securely and confidently.

We understand your concerns and would like to take this opportunity to thank you for using our banking services. As a responsible bank, ensuring that our customer account information is up-to-date is a key part in making banking more secure for customers. Additionally, by getting up-to-date account information, we will be able to provide you with more personalised banking services. We thank you for your understanding and support.

We understand your concerns and appreciate that you may have been using HSBC to meet your banking needs for a long period. As fraud and financial crime is becoming increasingly sophisticated, we need to adopt new measures to provide you with better protection. Therefore, from time to time, we do need to update our customer records to ensure they are current and complete. Having stronger checks will help prevent fraud and other financial crime.

Don't worry. We will periodically conduct reviews with customers to obtain the most relevant and up-to-date information. This is to ensure that all of the information we have is accurate, up-to-date and covers details that you haven't provided before or weren't previously required. The information you provide will help us protect your account from potential misuse. With all this information, we will be able to provide you with more personalised banking services.

As the world becomes increasingly connected and information moves around at a greater pace, there are unfortunately greater opportunities for criminals to misuse the financial system. A key defence against money laundering is to verify the origin of the funds from time to time as part of our ongoing efforts to track our customers' legitimate funds and to protect them from financial crime. Criminals will try to appear to be law abiding citizens or businesses and therefore we need to request documentary evidence from our customers in order to fully protect them and their accounts.

Constant changes in technology and the way companies do business have affected the whole banking industry and, in turn, how we protect it. Fraud and financial crime are becoming even more sophisticated and globally organised - so we have to be more vigilant than ever. We need you to help us stay one step ahead of financial crime by providing us with up-to-date information.

If you are a personal banking customer, we are likely to ask for two types of documents from you, one to confirm your identity and one to confirm your current address. They need to be in original (not copies) and in two separate documents.

If you are a business customer, the documents we ask for will depend on the size and nature of your business. However we are likely to need you to confirm your business legal entity structure, list of beneficial owners, and countries/regions you do business in.

We understand your concerns. HSBC always takes the lead in adopting the best practices to obtain relevant information from our customers. By having the information, we will be able to provide better protection and better banking services to our customers.

We will send you reminders and give you sufficient time to provide the information. If you are having trouble gathering the information, please do let us know as soon as possible so that we can help wherever possible. It may, for example, be possible for us to rely on alternative documents in your possession. Please let us know if you need more time or if you have any further questions.

As more and more of our customers live, travel and trade internationally, we are always looking for better ways to help you do the things you want to do safely. Part of this is to protect our customers around the globe. Our global systems and processes work by sharing data and customer information across borders in order to deter and detect financial crime. Even when you only bank in one country/region, we are committed to protecting your account globally as financial crime is a global operation.

By confirming your details and making sure that all the information we hold about you is up-to-date, you will help us to make banking more secure for you and our customers.