This week may be one worth going down in history for Hong Kong, as hotels near Central were almost sold out due to the simultaneous holding of multiple financial and arts events and the intensive disclosure of results by listed companies. Today, HSBC has also successfully upgraded to Hong Kong's "Volume King", becoming the first large foreign bank to remain open on Saturday afternoon.
Although the Hong Kong Observatory issued a yellow rainstorm warning early in the morning, the number of tourists in Tsim Sha Tsui is still huge, and the sea-viewing platform in Harbour City has been closed and cordoned off for safety reasons, and many tourists still shoot the scene of Victoria Harbour "mountain rain is about to come" through the glass windows of the mall.
Just yesterday, rumors of a large influx of deposits into Hong Kong escalated again. There are rumors that Hong Kong's big Chinese and foreign banks complain that "a large amount of deposits are pouring in, the safe is too full to fit, and there is so much money that there is no place to stand."
In response to this rumor, the reporter of CaiLian News Agency asked Hang Seng Bank yesterday for confirmation, and the other party said that Hang Seng's deposit portfolio and capital outflow and inflow remained normal.
Some foreign private bank executives have refuted the statement that "cash is piled up in banks", because, firstly, banks will not accept large cash deliveries, and secondly, customs have restrictions on entering and exiting cash, and the current international transfer method is mainly remittance.
Today, the reporter visited HSBC and insurance companies, which opened for the first time on Saturday afternoon, and found that there were long queues at the payment offices of AIA and Prudential; However, due to the appointment system, there are no queues at HSBC Ocean Centre branches.
How did HSBC open its doors for the first Saturday afternoon?
In response to and in line with the rising demand for financial services after full customs clearance, HSBC announced in Hong Kong on March 20 that its three branches will take the lead in opening 7 days a week on a trial basis, and at the same time plan to expand the size of the team serving mainland customers by 40%. This news immediately attracted a lot of market attention.
March 25 was the first seven-day trial day for HSBC's three branches. It is learnt that the three branches selected by HSBC this time include Ocean Centre HSBC, Parklane Premier Centre and Kwun Tong Branch, which are located in three bustling areas of Kowloon, Hong Kong Island and the New Territories in Hong Kong.
In terms of service hours, the service hours on Saturdays have been extended from 1 a.m. to 5 p.m., but on Sundays they are only open for half a day, and the doors are open from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. HSBC customers can make an appointment for non-cash banking services such as account opening and online or mobile banking via the website.
At about 13 o'clock today, the reporter came to the HSBC branch located in the Ocean Centre of Tsim Sha Tsui, which is one of the three designated branches selected by HSBC and is located in the largest Harbour City business district in Hong Kong. When the small blue dot on the map showed that it had almost reached its destination, the reporter saw that the crowd queuing in the corridor of the mall made several turns before barely standing. The excitement of arriving at the scene was quickly ignited. But when the reporter went to the front of the line, he found that the queue was for the international brand Chanel, and HSBC was located just above it.
It takes only 10 seconds to reach HSBC from the escalator from Chanel, but the scene at the two gates is very different, with only two or three people withdrawing money at ATMs in front of this very spacious bank compared to the bustle of customers buying bags. At the front desk of the Premier Centre, where accounts are opened, there are 4 staff members sitting side by side, there is no queue in the lobby, and there are some people in the business hall at the end of the corridor.
The reporter asked the front desk staff about account opening, and he said that he needed to make an appointment to open an account and assist the reporter to scan the code and fill in the content, but today's ordinary account opening appointment is full and it is impossible to open an account on site. The reporter immediately continued to consult the staff about the opening of a more advanced account and the US dollar high-interest deposit, and then was taken into the offices on both sides of the corridor to meet with the financial manager alone.
The wealth manager said that there are three levels of HSBC bank accounts, namely ordinary account, Premier account and Jade account, and the branch here is the Premier and Jade Wealth Management Centre, the excellent account opening needs to deposit the equivalent amount of 1 million Hong Kong dollars, the US dollar one-year deposit interest rate is 4.1%, and the opening of the Premier and Jade accounts requires an appointment.
During the reporter's stay at the HSBC Ocean Centre branch, he did not observe a large number of customers entering and leaving, and the few customers were light and simple, and no one carried a large amount of cash.
In addition, the reporter also visited the ordinary branches of HSBC and BOC in the downtown area and only open for half a day on Saturday, but did not observe a large number of customers queuing or people carrying huge amounts of cash, and only one or two people were handling business in the business hall of each bank, and the flow of people was far less than the coffee shop or snack bar next to it.
There is a 40-minute queue for insurance company payments
For many mainland customers, especially GBA residents, Hong Kong insurance is just as popular in Hong Kong as opening an offshore bank account. The reporter also visited the payment offices of AIA and Prudential in Harbour City today and found that there were a large number of queues in front of both counters, and most of them were Putonghua-speaking mainland customers.
Ms. Zhu, who came from Shenzhen, told reporters that in order to pay the bill, she queued for more than 40 minutes, this time for today's concert of Lin Junjie in Central, by the way, to pay for the insurance that has been purchased for many years and go shopping in Tsim Sha Tsui. "If you knew that you would have to queue for so long, you wouldn't have come up and paid in person, and you had to find a way to transfer money." Miss Zhu said.
In a café near Prudential, a Prudential customer also told reporters that newly purchased insurance must be certified at Prudential, but she went to the VIP reception room under Prudential, and the certification and payment took a total of half an hour, and there was no need to queue up for the whole process.
Mainland customers, especially residents in the Greater Bay Area, have been in demand for insurance and trust products in Hong Kong, and according to the "Blue Book of China's Cross-border Financial Services and Investment Industry" released by China Insights Consulting at the end of February, due to the epidemic, individual investors cannot travel to Hong Kong, coupled with UnionPay'Chinese mainland s limited access to purchase insurance, the scale of the insurance business market for Chinese mainland investors in Hong Kong has declined rapidly in the past five years.
Recently, a number of Hong Kong insurance practitioners told reporters that their business has recovered or even slightly better than the same period in 2019. However, the recovery is not overnight, let alone rain and dew, the person in charge of an insurance agency told reporters that the insurance business of his institution has not improved significantly, because a large number of institutional customers have closed or changed careers in the 3 years of the epidemic, and some customers have been poached by insurance agents with higher commissions.
Massive inflow of overseas funds? It may take time to verify
According to the latest data from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Hong Kong deposits rose by 1.3% in January 2023, of which Hong Kong dollar deposits rose by 2.4% and RMB deposits increased by 0.2% month-on-month to RMB837.3 billion.
Obviously, the data in January is not consistent with the market rumors that "a large number of wealthy people are migrating funds to Hong Kong", and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority also responded on the 22nd that as an international financial center, Hong Kong often handles the inflow and outflow of funds between different business activities, and the HKMA will maintain close ties with the financial industry and other stakeholders to promote the sustainable development of Hong Kong's financial market.
Yan Zhaojun, a strategist at Zhongtai International, believes that it is currently impossible to see whether a large number of US dollar funds have migrated to Hong Kong, which needs to wait for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to disclose relevant data after 2 months, mainly depending on whether Hong Kong dollars and US dollar deposits have increased significantly. A significant increase would partly be evidence of an inflow.
The reporter also wrote to the Hong Kong Insurance Authority on Friday to ask about the latest Hong Kong insurance sales data this year, but it takes time for the Insurance Authority to collect data and respond.
Some insiders told reporters that after the opening and closing, residents' cross-border financial management demand surged, and the successive bank failures or acquisitions in Europe and the United States also increased investors' worries, Hong Kong account opening and insurance business have increased this quarter, but did not observe the huge inflow as rumored on the Internet, bank employees overtime is not the truth, "banks pile up a lot of cash" This statement is even more impossible, how big the overseas capital inflow is needed time to verify.
This article is from CaiLian News
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