HSBC Safeguard

Fraud and financial crimes are forms of theft. They tend to involve money or property that are gained illegally, and used in a deceptive or illegal manner to gain a benefit from the proceeds. In today's complex economy, financial crimes can take many forms including money laundering, sanctions breaches, fraud, tax evasion, terrorist financing, bribery and corruption.

HSBC Safeguard is a series of initiatives to increase the protection we provide our customers against fraud and financial crime across our global systems and processes. It involves strengthening our ability to combat money laundering and the evasion of sanctions, as these are often the driver behind many financial crimes. In addition, we will no longer be offering products such as travellers’ cheques, as we believe they are no longer a safe enough way for our customers to convert their money and we may review other products like this over time.

Sanctions are a policy tool which national governments and organisations such as the United Nations and European Union use to constrain and deter perceived threats to their security, or to conform international conduct to recognised international standards. Sanctions help to stop crimes like terrorism, drug trafficking and arms dealing by imposing restrictions on the business that banks can do with specific people, corporations or countries/regions and the names of these are clearly listed on things like the Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) sanctions list.

At HSBC, addressing financial crime globally has long been one of our main priorities.

However criminal activity has become increasingly sophisticated in recent years, and fraudsters, money launderers and others have attempted to target global networks like banks.

Improving the way we share and manage customer information will help us fight against the risk of financial crime. After all, it’s our duty to ensure that you can bank with us safely, securely, and confidently.

As the world becomes more and more connected and information moves around at a greater pace, there are unfortunately greater opportunities for criminals to misuse the financial system. A key defence against money laundering is to prevent accounts being opened in false identities. We also sometimes need to verify where funds are from as part of our ongoing efforts to track our customers’ legitimate funds and to protect them from financial crime. Criminals will try to appear to be law abiding citizens or businesses and therefore we need to request documentary evidence from all of our customers in order to fully protect them and their accounts.

If you’re a personal banking customer, we're likely to need at least two types of documents from you: one to confirm your identity and one to confirm your current address. These need to be two separate documents and need to be originals and not copies.

If you’re a business customer, the documents we will need will depend on the size and nature of your business. However we are likely to need you to confirm your legal entity structure and beneficial owners as well as countries or regions you do business with.