Nadya techvision

HSBC’s global head of wholesale digital channels talks to Liz Lumley about how growth can be uncomfortable, the importance of fostering creativity and building a team that represents international customers.

Despite having English as a first language, it took Nadya Hijazi, HSBC’s global head of wholesale digital channels, a long time to “really understand” the way people expressed themselves in the UK after moving from the UAE.  

“The way people talk about things was different, it was challenging,” she says. “I was coming into a brand-new field that people weren’t in at the bank, which was digital.”

In addition, while Ms Hijazi was proud to be working for such a well-known global brand, there were hardly any women working in her sector.

Career history: Nadya Hijazi 

2021 HSBC, global head of wholesale digital channels

2014 HSBC, global head of digital, global liquidity and cash management

2009 HSBC, global head of global transaction banking interactive e-channels — HSBCnet and mobile

2005 HSBC, global head e-channels, strategy and research

2002 HSBC, European head of HSBCnet

“I’ve always said, if I ever had the opportunity to be in a leadership position, I was going to create a team that was closer to being international,” she adds. “Because if your providence and the focus of the organisation is international, then your teams need to be international.”

Ms Hijazi is also working to increase the percentage of women working in digital and technology at the bank, both in the coding teams and in leadership.

“That might sound like not much, but believe me, that’s a lot, it’s something to be really proud of,” she says. “I’m quite proud that I’m a Muslim woman. I’m a third-generation refugee … we’ve managed to show that you can do anything through hard work, opportunity and support.”

Currently, Ms Hijazi and her team are working in partnership with the bank’s global payment solutions team, on making it easier for customers to track and manage their payments.

“We are working to deliver track-and-trace capability, which provides the capability to track the status of a single payment or batch of payments from initiation to completion. We are also looking to scale our digital request for information (RFI) capability that enables customers to manage their RFIs completely online, massively reducing customers wait time and decreasing calls to the helpdesk,” she adds. 

In addition, the bank is looking at opportunities to drive automation across trade finance, and allowing clients to submit loan and supplier payment data digitally. It is also working to deliver application programming interface (API)-enabled products and services to the market and is currently piloting a user-management API, which provides corporate customers with ability to suspend, create and re-activate users in a global digital platform called HSBCnet.

This work, in addition to managing the digital delivery of long-term regulatory initiatives such as the migration to ISO 20022 for cross-border payment messaging, has been done amidst several years of global uncertainty.

“In my experience, uncertainty often inspires creativity and creates an environment where, as a team, we must think outside of the box. Innovation is so important, particularly in financial services, otherwise we risk stagnation,” says Ms Hijazi. 

Over the past few years, with Covid-19 as a catalyst, the bank has focused its innovation efforts across digital, particularly across digital onboarding, she adds.

“The onboarding journey for customers is not necessarily the space where customers get direct value; however, it is the route to access products and services,” says Ms Hijazi. “It’s even more important to ensure we provide an experience whereby the customer says: ‘That was easy, fast and I had all the support I needed.’” Over the past few years, the company has supported 60,000 UK business banking customers with digital onboarding capabilities, she adds.

Innovation across both retail and wholesale banking is driven by the needs of the customers; however, a point of difference for wholesale banking is the complexity that comes with the multifaceted nature of a company’s operations, says Ms Hijazi. 

To continue the commitment to digital onboarding, the bank launched HSBC SmartServe for commercial and global banking customers, which has been rolled out to 25 markets.

“Corporate clients are becoming increasingly sophisticated and demanding in their banking requirements, and it’s important for us to co-create and solve challenges collectively,” says Ms Hijazi.

One of the strategies HSBC employs to maintain a level of innovation that matches the pace of change and technology is having internal teams work more flexibly and break down silos between traditional business functions.

“For financial services, one of the things that I’ve found is that you have to spark creativity in people,” says Ms Hijazi, especially for large organisations with such well-defined roles and processes. “Because if we don’t do that, all of that talent and thinking just goes into the fintechs,” she adds.

Ultimately, Ms Hijazi believes the key to innovation is being open to new ways of working. “I’m a big fan of open banking; I know that’s not the thing to say in a big bank, but actually, I really am because it’s pushed us in ways that made us uncomfortable, but in good ways,” she says. “It’s like any growth: when you’re uncomfortable, you’re growing.”  

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