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A FRESH VISION: HSBC’ s Fiona Horsewill sets out her roadmap for growth
Infrastructure build-out and digitalisation form the basis of HSBC’ s multi-year strategy, while a focus on key markets is bearing fruit for the securities services unit.
Joining HSBC as global head of securities services in March 2023, Fiona Horsewill set out to reset the strategy and the vision of the business through a wide-reaching modernisation programme – with infrastructure upgrades and digitalisation at the heart of that strategy. The driving force of that vision has come in the shape of a multi-year strategy – now entering its second year – centred on two core pillars: infrastructure buildout and digitalisation.“ The end goal is to ensure that we’ re still very much front and centre for our clients as they look to execute their plans,” Horsewill tells Global Custodian.“ The strategy goes across a couple of axes. It focuses on connecting clients from across the globe into various markets where they might have growth ambitions and providing our expertise, helping clients to navigate that journey.“ It’ s also a scale game in terms of the infrastructure to support that – using our global operating model to deploy consistent servicing, regardless of jurisdiction or asset class, and being able to deliver the markets as near time as possible to our clients so they can service their investors more effectively.” Horsewill also points to the importance of providing a consistent level of service across the asset class spectrum – from listed assets to private assets, the evergrowing ETF market, as well as the nascent digital asset space.“ We are that one-stop for clients in terms of being able to leverage our infrastructure to have their breadth of investment profile and to be able to manoeuvre different geographies – which is critical for global asset managers, asset owners and broker-dealers,” she explains.“ If you think about HSBC, the UK and Hong Kong are our two home markets. We are the largest securities services provider across Asia. We’ re leading across the Middle East. We’ re across 96 markets and with boots on the ground in 33 markets. That footprint means that we can enable our clients in many different ways – whether it be through servicing and infrastructure, introductions into local eco systems or through support across asset classes – all the while ensuring that we’ re bringing future-ready services to them.”
Growth opportunities Identifying and targeting key growth markets has also been feature of HSBC’ s multi-year strategy, with Horsewill pointing to the opening up of capital markets and wealth growth in emerging markets as a significant opportunity for the business. In Asia, for example, the total AUM has doubled in the last decade – with various sources suggesting that will continue into the future.“ In particular, the areas of focus for us are certainly ASEAN, India, China, Saudi Arabia and UAE,” says Horsewill.“ We’ re seeing that our global clients are going into those markets to service the local populations there, so our strategy is tightly aligned with the trends we are
46 Global Custodian Spring 2025