Do we like them?

Do we like HSBC?

Global bank, London-based, with Asia as its biggest market: retail, business and investment banking.

Our score: 3 out of 10. Not for us. Regulators keep finding control failures, the cartel-laundering past is grim, and its climate promises have been walked back. It has paid up and fixed some things.

HSBC is a huge London-headquartered bank that now leans hard on Asia. Georges Elhedery became CEO in September 2024 and is shrinking its Western operations. Brendan Nelson, a former KPMG banking boss, became chair in December 2025 in a surprise move, after the CEO had said he didn't want the job long-term.

The big skeleton is Mexico. In 2012 US prosecutors said a drug lord had called HSBC Mexico the 'place to launder money'. The bank paid a record $1.92bn and avoided criminal charges through a deferred prosecution deal. The ICIJ later reported that HSBC kept moving dirty money while on probation.

More recently, HSBC Australia admitted in the Federal Court that it failed to protect customers from scams and agreed a A$35m penalty with ASIC in June 2026. The judge thought the penalty was on the low side. HSBC had first signalled it would fight the case, and it has been repaying customers.

On climate, HSBC once promised big things. In 2025 it pushed its operational net-zero target from 2030 to 2050 and left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported it helped raise over $47bn for fossil fuel expanders. HSBC says it is still aiming for net zero by 2050.

Our score is 3. The bank has cleaned up some conduct and pays when caught. But the pattern of regulator fines across several countries, the cartel history and the climate backsliding add up to a bank we wouldn't back with our money.