seeing.” One such example demonstrating that focus is the recent asset servicing role in Asia’ s first ETF tracking the performance of Saudi Arabian equities – launched by CSOP Asset Management for Hong Kong investors.“ This gives you an idea of the diverse range of activity we’ re seeing and how we’ re able to facilitate that cross-corridor traffic and trade,” adds Horsewill.
Priority call With growth across both markets and emerging asset classes, Horsewill expresses the need for efficient and effective resource allocation across the organisation.“ In this business, you need to continually invest in your capabilities to remain best-in-class,” she explains.“ It’ s always a prioritisation call, and service providers will never get away from that, so you will hear that consistently across the industry, I’ m sure.“ Private market assets and ETFs have for the last 18-24 months been a priority call and it was one that we doubled down on when I joined. That’ s where we’ re seeing the client demand, and we really feel strongly around the importance of being able to service across asset classes and aggregate that data so that clients – whether they be an investment manager or an insurance company or a sovereign wealth fund – can actually see the totality of their portfolio without too much effort. It’ s about making their workflows frictionless.” Those priority calls must also follow the fundamental principles set out in the firm’ s multi-year strategy – working alongside the infrastructure build-out and technological advancement.“ That’ s critical because it means you maximise your investment and that you maximise the benefits around that,” Horsewill notes. Digital assets, too, have been a key focus area for the bank, which has been in the vanguard of innovation for the emerging space. HSBC’ s Orion platform has been the vital foundation for a number of initiatives ranging from digital bond issuances to the tokenisation of physical gold.“ An interesting factor is that BNP Paribas and JP Morgan are direct participants of the HSBC Orion platform in Luxembourg and that allows for much more interconnectivity in the ecosystem,” adds Horsewill.“ It goes back to the point of allowing clients to conduct business across asset classes and ecosystems – we see that as a growing trend. We are seeing more and more demand coming through that and we’ re seeing, that on those bond issuances, we even have a secondary market.”
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