Fruitful meeting with HSBC shareholders

In the firsT six months of this year, HSBC Bank Malta's operating income rose by over 10 per cent when compared to the first six months of 2004. Over the same period, the bank's cost to income ratio also improved to 47.5 per cent, evidencing a strong underlying performance. Shareholders saw an almost 100 per cent increase in the gross dividend per share.

This information, besides the bank's other business plans, were presented during a meeting for the bank's local shareholders earlier this month. The meeting, which discussed current developments at HSBC as well as strategies for the future, was addressed by HSBC chairman Albert Mizzi and chief executive officer Shaun Wallis. The bank's management team were also present to answer questions from shareholders.

"We feel that meetings with our shareholders provide a vital opportunity for feedback that is invaluable for an organisation that wants to build for the future," Mr Wallis said.

He explained the continuing improvement in the bank's underlying performance over the past three years. He also spoke of the increasing investment in the use of technology, which is instrumental for HSBC to deliver a better service to customers through automation and electronic services, and to the back office to improve processing and decision-making in support of the front office.

Some 31,000 customers are now subscribed to HSBC's Personal Internet Banking Service with monthly Internet transactions nearing 500,000. HSBC's call centre is now also handling some 400,000 enquiries a year, while ATMs see 662,000 transactions a month.

The use of HSBC's mobile services, launched last February, has also increased with 11,000 registered users by the end of August. This all means that 78 per cent of all transactions between HSBC and its customers are conducted through automation and electronic services, improving customer access and convenience.

HSBC is also currently rolling out almost 1,600 new Electronic Point of Sales (EPOS) terminals for shops, hotels and restaurants. Mr Wallis explained that with these new machines the time taken to process card transactions will decrease from 28 seconds to just nine, for those outlets that use dial-up service, while outlets using ADSL or cable Internet can now process transactions in just two seconds. This follows the completion of work to upgrade all of the 65 ATMs and 21 deposit machines.