Company: HBCYF
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001089113-25-000040
Chunk: 37

Company: HSBC HOLDINGS PLC
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 20-F
Chunk 37
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 Germany and our business in South Africa. We signed a memorandum of understanding in relation to the planned sale of our France life insurance business and have launched a strategic review of our business in Malta. The review is at an early stage and no decisions have been made. We completed the acquisition of Citi’s retail wealth management portfolio in mainland China and SilkRoad Property Partners Group in Singapore. We expect further reshaping actions as we align the Group with our four businesses.

Deposit strength core to our strategy We are proud of our deposit strength across all of our franchises, which has built steadily since our founding. We have a total deposit base of $1.65tn, comprised primarily of current and savings accounts. Our balance sheet is also highly liquid with customer loans of $0.93tn, representing 56% of customer deposits. We operate with a customer deposits surplus of $724bn relative to customer loans. We hold a surplus of deposits in each of our major functional currencies, including US dollars, Hong Kong dollars, sterling, renminbi and the euro. We also operate a surplus of customer deposits relative to customer loans in our major operating entities, including The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, HSBC UK and HSBC Bank plc. The long 2009-2021 period of close-to-zero central bank interest rates and very low government bond yields in many of our operational currencies constrained our earnings in prior years. One contributor to our rise in profits in recent years has been a return of central bank interest rates and government bond yields to levels more typical of prior decades. Over the period from 2022 to 2024, we increased both the size and duration of our structural hedge, further stabilising our banking NII. The sensitivity of our banking NII to a 100bps parallel downward shift in interest rates has reduced from c.$(7)bn at 30 June 2022, to $(2.9)bn at 31 December 2024. This was primarily due to hedging actions, although higher prevailing interest rates also contributed to a reduction in sensitivity. The Group expects to further increase the size and duration of the structural hedge, subject to market conditions. $1.65tn Customer deposit balances (2023: $1.61tn) $0.93tn Customer loans (2023: $0.94tn)

Improving operational excellence through artificial intelligence We are transforming our operations to enhance customer experiences through the use of artificial intelligence (‘AI’) and automation to help deliver faster, personalised and more