HSBC Holdings plc (HSBA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I hope all of you've got some rest last night and are all refreshed for the big day today. I'm really excited to have all of you here in Singapore because this is where we are seeing a significant amount of that shift in the growth momentum that we referenced on Monday. And I think today, I'm joined by some of my senior Exco colleagues in Asia. There's Stuart, [ Amanda ], the back Monish, who are all going to present in the afternoon on their businesses in the wholesale side. We've got [ Kiju ] and Dave who'll do the morning on Singapore and India, respectively. And we've also got Ming in the audience in case there are any questions relating to finance. But firstly, it's really good to welcome you to this office. This is our new office in Singapore. We spent 100 or 80 years in the office down the road there, and we moved here through the pandemic. It's a great new facility. It shows our commitment to growing our business in Singapore as a hub, and we'll talk about that as we go through this morning. But I also wanted to just use this opportunity to recap a couple of messages from the session we had in Hong Kong. We are where the growth is, and we are exploiting the interconnectedness of the network to deliver for our customers. And part of what you see today across the rest of Asia and Singapore and India is very much about that interconnectedness of the network and how we deliver for our customers. We have been growing outside of Hong Kong and China in the last 2 years, a testament to that. But I do want to say that when you go back to the period of the DPA, 2013 to '18, the region that we're going to talk about today was arguably the most impacted by the risk-related exits and reduction in investments that we have done during those 5 years. And since '18, we've started to turn the momentum around. And one of the key things that we'd like to get across today to you is that the momentum is strong, and we want to continue to build on that as we go ahead over the next few years. Through today, you'll also have the opportunity to hear from the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore. And we will have demos like we did yesterday on WPB, but today from our wholesale businesses from markets and cash and trade. I'd also like to just maybe clarify 2 points that came up on Monday. On loan growth, ex Hong Kong, China, we have grown at 8% in the rest of the region. So the region that we're going to be talking about today, we've seen 8% loan growth over the last 12 months. On China specifically, David is not here, but he had asked me to mention this in the morning in my opening remarks. When we mention licenses and we talk about securities licenses, there are 5 licenses under that. We aggregate that as one. We also have a license that we are under NDA at the moment that will be announced in due course. So we do believe we have all the important licenses, the key ones, and we are growing at a much -- from a much larger base at a faster pace than our competitors are in China. So that's about China. Today is about this morning, particularly is about Singapore, India and the rest of Asia. Singapore today is a $2 billion revenue business for us, and we will talk about how we are building that as a hub for wealth and wholesale. India's $1.5 billion revenue business for us, and it's growing at a strong double-digit clip. It's also where we are seeing the value of the international network play through significantly. And then we have the rest of Asia where we have $4.5 billion of revenue last year, $2 billion of PBT. But as an aggregate, again, this is the part of the world where when you think about the plus one and the supply chain shifts that are happening, we are seeing this play out in our network, and we will talk to some of that as we speak later today. I'm now going to invite [ Kiju ] up to talk about Singapore, and I'll come back later to talk about the rest of Asia. [ Kiju ].