My Experience with HSBC Bank

At last my first official Blog (The history of last year was more a memoir) in a few months and first for 2010.
Since last September I have been enquiring with a couple of branches HSBC Bank (in Oxford street and one near my office) on how to open an account in the UK, to negate the heavy service charges pressed upon me by ICICI bank, my salary account in India, for the ATM withdrawals in the UK and also to hedge the currency fluctuation, which was eating up my account balance. To put it into context, an average withdrawal would make your poorer by atleast £10 per withdrawal and this was the least you want when you are long term. At that instance, HSBC clearly stated that I needed a visa valid for a year (I had a 2 year multiple entry Business Visa then) and a visa that was a permanent one, like atleast a Work Permit and not a Visitor or a Business Visa.
I had dropped the idea then to open the account and resumed my enquiry in the middle of December, before I went away to India on my Vacation and to get my Work Permit Visa done. The requirements were very simple and they just wanted a letter from my employee in the UK stating my addresses in India and the UK along with copies of my passport and visa. Typically and actually the account is called a Passport account valid for a minimum of one year and extendable thereafter and had only a minimum charge of £8 per month for maintenance.
Once I returned in January I walked to same branch of HSBC, pretty close from my office in London, just to double check the requirements they had stated in December. This time the representative gave me a totally different set of requirements and told me that I needed a credit history in the UK for them to open an account. Then I questioned her about the entire idea of why HSBC had an account for immigrants to the UK called the Passport account, as they would not have any credit history, for which, she went blank and to cover her reasons, she told me that her branch had to have a tie up with my company Allianz to accept their letter as a proof and that she would call the next morning confirming the requirements. I waited and got no response from her and was disappointed and gutted for the lack of customer experience that she and the bank had provided.
Nonetheless, I called their customer help line no. to get the customer rep’s contact details and ended up enquiring the requirements and they gave the same that I had received in December. That evening, whilst returning home, the team and I decided to stop at Canary Wharf to buy groceries at TESCO’s and some window shopping at the Mall. The Mall is primarily set up for the employees who work in and around the financial hub of London, so we can expect the prices to be on the higher end and it is Canary Wharf. In the Mall they had a personal banking branch of HSBC, and I tried my luck to enter and get the requirements and found that they were the same as of December and as spelt out by the telebanking staff. So I reached out to my UK line manager in Guildford for her to pass on the letter to me, which with some work around as she was going on her vacation, got it done through another senior member of our group. I got a scanned copy of the letter only to find out from the telebanking staff that they required an original. A friend of mine was to bring over to London and he forgot it in a hurry.
I tried my luck, or took a hint from Robin Sharma’s 62 things you should do this year, one of which is take small risks in life everyday, no try, no win. So here I was with a coloured printout of the scanned copy to the branch with my passport and then, began the most extraordinary customer experience I have had so far, especially opening a bank account or with any financial institution.
The manager walked out and told me that they cant do it unless I work over at canary wharf and I told him that they did not mention it a couple of days earlier and I would have not wasted my time. He instantly apologised for not informing me and since it was their error put me onto a representative to open the account. She looked at my letter, took my passport, photocopied the passport and the Visa and began opening the account on her computer. She told me that she would need to do an international credit verification as I had no credit history in the UK, for which, I gave her my thumbs up. She kept speaking to me and reiterating the rules and regulations of the account type and in about 8 minutes she asked me to punch in my security numbers onto the account on her screen. My first question to her was, is the account set up and she said absolutely yes and its nearly done and I had to punch in my security numbers to complete the set up. I asked her next about the international credit verification and she said it’s already done and it was part of the set up. They finished my international credit check in less than 8 minutes, WOW !!. I punched in my security codes and it is a 8 digit number and she prompted me not to have any dates in, such as, date of birth or marriage anniversary etc. as it can hacked She then excused herself for a minute to return with the account kit and explained it for about two minutes and here I was with a UK bank account with HSBC in less than 10 minutes.
This experience does not end here; she told me that if I had a friend who had a passport account, I could send her the details of his account and both of us would get £10 into each of our accounts. I obliged, and sent the details the very next morning and as promised by her, it was in my account in less than 48 hours. Then, the next thing which amused me was how the debit card arrived. I reached home last night to find a post with my address details hand written. It was a normal white cover and my assumption was, it was tickets to the Manchester United games that I booked and was infact delighted to see them. To my astonishment it was the debit card, placed between two pieces of thin chart paper and on them it was written, stating that, for security reasons they have placed my cover containing the debit card between them and posted it to me as a normal post, that fraudsters don’t notice it. I went gaga over the idea and the intent and the extent they would go to securitize the customers.
It’s been a terrific customer experience with a premier international bank or for matter any financial institution that I have had a relationship with. An India, opening a bank account with a Chinese bank, HSBC, in the financial capital and Hub of the United Kingdom, and that’s how multicultural London can be.