How HSBC is providing businesses solutions to bank on

The Government of India, in its Economic Survey 2020, focused on making the banking system efficient for its customers. The survey went on to list key drivers to make banking efficient, and one of them was to modernise the digital infrastructure.

Financial institutions in India, especially banks, have sought to offer top-notch products and services with a key focus on digital mechanisms to deliver them. Along with stellar growth in the retail banking space, business banking too has made strides from, say, a decade ago. But, the changing nature, depth and complexities of business banking sometimes outweighs the progress made by such services, exposing the need for a simple, comprehensive and intuitive digital banking for its customers.

Some of the challenges faced by current businesses revolve around the need for additional support beyond work hours, multi-currency payments, tracking those payments, and having a secured platform to conduct their banking needs.

Here’s an in-depth look at these challenges and the cutting-edge solutions by HSBC to overcome them:

All-in-one account overview and dashboard

While businesses do conduct banking online, the sheer presence of multiple types of accounts with their banks — along with various other products offered, having one single window with all these details has been a challenge. Customers strive for a window that could display details, balances, and transactions etc. with one major differentiator of customisation.

Global banking giant HSBC seeks to help its customer bank smarter by offering solutions to the issues mentioned earlier, and more. Its digital banking solution: the all-new HSBCnet, a simplified yet intuitive and enhanced version now ensures that it meets all the requirements of its business banking customers—even more intuitively. While it does give you the benefit of an all-in-one-window to view all the banking details, the global nature of the platform, its multi-lingual functionality and access to cash management and trade services is also among the key takeaways from this product.

The bank also offers intricate customisation of services and features with its Bank at your desk service. With HSBCnet, customers can get access to a global, secure, state-of-the-art internet banking portal that has a consolidated view of all accounts held with HSBC across geographies in a single window. One can get a single point of access to its full suite of payment and reporting services across geographies.

Keeping a track of payments

Apart from the display of account information, businesses deal with large volumes of payments — both receivables and payables. It is of utmost importance for banks to offer a separate feature on their digital platforms that helps customers track all their payments, which is largely lacking among banks’ digital offerings.

HSBCnet offers you a track payment option, which lets you view your payment status for the last 35 days. Users of the app or the desktop version simply have to click on ‘Go to all tracked payments’ to see the individual status for each payment.

Traditionally, tracking payments can be cumbersome for account-holders involving a lot of communication. One can also get enhanced visibility on their payment activities as the service lets you flag actions needed from you. For instance, you can authorise, repair, reject or cancel payments.

Support messaging

Amid non-24X7 physical banking hours and limited options on telephone and chat-bot banking, customers often look for one single place to exchange communication with the bank for ease of use as well as keeping a record of all communication with their banks. Having a message centre or an email user interface between customers and banks is crucial and there are only few lenders in the country addressing this challenge.

Security

Given the increased instances of online frauds and the sophistication in the nature of attacks carried out on financial institutions, security of transactions and banking activities has been of paramount importance. HSBCnet also offers NetPlus, a functionality that provides customers with useful information, services and tools. NetPlus is divided into two sections — Protect and Inform.

Under the Protect mechanism, the bank keeps customers informed about cybersecurity and fraud awareness in a bid to safeguard businesses from crimes. The Inform mechanism has a slew of ‘How to’ videos on the HSBCnet tools and how they work along with HSBC market intelligence and business insights.

Using HSBCnet, customers can stay updated about cybersecurity threats and solutions along with learning how to prevent and protect businesses from such attacks.

Case studies

Users of the digital banking solutions hail the service for ease of its user interface to carry out their banking transactions. One of its marquee customers is Hector Beverages that produces and markets the PaperBoat range of beverages.

“At Hector Beverages (PaperBoat), we’ve found our entire financial workflow streamlined with HSBCnet. The mobile app allows us to disburse salaries on the move, and that is just one of the many ways in which their digital banking solutions help drive efficiencies. Our entire tax payment process has also been streamlined across Customs, GST, ECS, Professional Tax and PF. The additional support we get on ensuring correct uploads bolstered by rapid challan generation saves us countless man-hours and normalizes reconciliation,” said Fatima Sami, CFO, Hector Beverages Pvt Ltd

For Whitesheep Technologies, the maker of online video editing software InVideo, HSBCnet’s streamlined solutions and simplified banking operations have been very helpful. “The decision we took for partnering with HSBC internationally has really been fruitful. We have a streamlined banking and at the same time awesome service which helps us get immediate solutions. We got all our banking windows under one roof and that not only simplified banking but our internal reporting to management. We really appreciate the service, promptness and seamless banking with HSBC,” said Mitul Doshi, CFO, InVideo (Whitesheep Technologies Pvt Ltd).

In a nutshell

“Business banking activities of customers operate at a swift speed and in real-time. To cater to such requirements, it is imperative for banks like us to keep up with the changes in technology, regulation and economic environment, all of which and more is fulfilled by the all-new HSBCnet which is a truly digital banking platform built for emerging corporates. Its interface is not just powerful, but the intuitive and the self-help online tools will help you manage the most basic and the most complex banking needs in no time,” added Prakash Jaiswal, Country Head, Business Banking (SME), HSBC India.

To know more about HSBCnet and how it can solve your digital banking problems visit: https://www.business.hsbc.co.in/en-gb/netbbx