In a landmark moment for financial technology, HSBC has unveiled results from a quantum computing trial that could redefine how Wall Street approaches bond trading. The bank’s experiment, conducted in partnership with IBM, demonstrated a 34% improvement in predicting bond trade execution—an edge that could translate into billions in competitive advantage.

Quantum Meets Wall Street

HSBC, a British multinational universal bank, is venturing into cryptocurrencies, digital assets and tokenization, as revealed in key job openings by the Europe's largest bank by total assets.

HSBC is particularly interested in recruiting a Product Director to oversee “tokenization” use cases and Web3.

In the job role's description, the bank noted that the candidates would have the external role of representing the company to ‘regulators, clients, and the digital assets ecosystem to position HSBC’ as a ‘leader and innovator in furtherance of the digital assets strategy.’

The job positions roles have been necessitated by the evolving nature of the crypto sector and involved risk appetite.

The job opening for Product Manager for digital assets will be responsible for driving the cryptocurrency agenda.

“The Product Manager for Digital Assets will be required to build strategic frameworks and policies to help drive complex business, project and governance decisions. This will include the strategic creation and day-to-day management of governance forums and committees to efficiently and transparently drive the digital assets agenda,” the bank said.

For both roles, HSBC is looking for individuals who can operate in an ambiguous environment with knowledge of handling the changing regulatory landscape.

In these job adverts, the bank is indicating a potential launch of a digital assets offering called — GPB&W Digital Assets.

With this, HSBC will join other global banking giants like J. P. Morgan in offering cryptocurrency and digital assets products.

To recall, earlier in November last year, Standard Chartered invested in Partior, the blockchain-based payment network founded Temasek, J.P. Morgan and DBS Bank. At the same time, HSBC and Wells Fargo expanded their blockchain-based foreign exchange settlement system to include the offshore yuan. The two banking giants launched a shared private ledger in December 2021. 

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HSBC Holdings Plc has reportedly suspended a senior executive who accused central bankers and other officials of exaggerating the financial risks of climate change. The senior executive who has been suspended is a leader in the HSBC's responsible investing team.

The senior HSBC executive, Stuart Kirk, who is based in London, is involved in a role, in HSBC, to consider the impact of investments on environmental, social and governance issues.

Last week, in a Financial Times' Moral Money Summit, Kirk said, "There's always some nut job telling me about the end of the world.". He gave a 15-minute presentation entitled "Why investors need not worry about climate risk", in the FT summit on Thursday. “Climate change is not a financial risk that we need to worry about,” Kirk Said.

Later in weekend, HSBC Group Chief Executive, Noel Quinn, said that an executive’s remarks playing down the risk of climate change are “inconsistent” with the bank’s strategy and don’t reflect views of senior management.

India unit of British bank HSBC has executed India's first financial transaction using blockchain technology for a deal involving an export by Reliance Industries to its client Tricon Energy in the US.

Tricon Energy used HSBC (India)-engineered blockchain-enabled Letter of Credit (LoC) deploying electronic Bill of Lading (eBL) platform Bolero to benchmark the country’s adoption of disruptive decentralized ledger technology in domestic and cross-border transactions.

Bolero is a UK-based trade finance digitisation solutions provider. The blockchain-based system developed by Bolero allows issue and management of e-form bill of lading and is integrated with digital transfer of goods, titles involving buyers and sellers in any given trade.

The blockchain-enabled LoC transaction was for a shipment from the Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) to US-based Tricon Energy. This blockchain-based financial transaction helped both the companies to reduce the time required to process the documents.

"The use of blockchain offers significant potential to reduce the timelines involved in exchange of export documentation from the extant seven-ten days to less than a day," RIL joint chief financial officer Srikanth Venkatachari was quoted as saying by PTI.

RIL further claimed claimed that the solution is a significant improvement for any organisation involved in buying and selling goods internationally, as it brings together all parties onto one platform.

Hitendra Dave, head of global banking & markets, HSBC (India), said, "The use of blockchain is a significant step towards digitising trade. It has a transformative impact on trade finance transactions and enables greater transparency and enhanced security, in addition to making it simpler and faster. The overall efficiency it brings to trade finance ensures cost effectiveness, quicker turnaround and potentially unlocks liquidity for businesses."

Banks across the world are adopting blockchain as a transparent, quick and secure platform for sharing documents, validating authenticity and enabling faster financial transactions.

Recent Blockchain Use by Indian Entities

Last Month, India's ICICI Bank joined JP Morgan's blockchain-based payment project called Interbank Information Network (IIN), and become the only bank from India to have joined JP Morgan's proprietary blockchain platform.

In September, National Stock Exchange of India Ltd (NSE) had conducted tests to use blockchain for e-voting for listed companies on a platform provided by Mumbai-based blockchain startup Elemential Labs

In August, in order to fight fake medicines problem in the country, government of India's policy maker, NITI Aayog, partnered with Oracle and local chain of hospitals, Apollo Hospitals, where Oracle will integrate its blockchain technology and a distributed ledger solution in pharmaceutical supply chain, which will create records that are unchangeable for each pharma transaction.

In April this year, India’s first blockchain-based network went live when three online bill-discounting exchanges -- Receivables Exchange of India (RXIL), A.TReDS, and M1xchange -- came together and implemented a blockchain-based solution for their operations to deter fraud.

In the same month, Kerala's Blockchain Academy of state-run IIITM-Kerala has become the first Indian Institution to get membership of Hyperledger Project.

Via ~ Business Today