Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to HSBC Talks Business, the podcast series that brings together business leaders and industry experts to explore the latest global insights, trends, and opportunities.
Speaker: Make sure you're subscribed to stay up to date with new episodes.
Speaker: Thanks for listening.
Speaker: And now onto today's show.
Speaker: Well, hello there.
Speaker: Thanks very much indeed for joining us on behalf of HSBC.
Speaker: I would like to welcome you.
Speaker: My name is Richard, Richard Dean.
Speaker: I'm a business journalist and I'm going to be your host for today.
Speaker: Now, joined by three speakers today, let me very briefly introduce them.
Speaker: First of all, saying hello to the head of commercial banking for the Middle East HSBC, Patricia Gomez.
Speaker: Patricia, hi there.
Speaker: Hello, Richard.
Speaker: Good to have you with us.
Speaker: Thanks very much indeed.
Speaker: Also joining us on the call today is Vivek Ramachandran.
Speaker: Vivek is HSBC's Head of Global Trade and Receivables Finance.
Speaker: Vivek, how are you?
Speaker: Hey, Richard.
Speaker: Good to see everyone.
Speaker: Nice to have you with us.
Speaker: Thanks very much indeed.
Speaker: And finally, we also have the Global Head of Sustainability for HSBC's commercial banking business.
Speaker: Natalie Blythe joins us.
Speaker: Natalie, hi there.
Speaker: Hi, Richard.
Speaker: Great to be here.
Speaker: Thanks very much.
Speaker: indeed.
Speaker: Now, the main focus is a new piece of research that is out.
Speaker: It is HSBC's new report called Global Supply Chains, Networks of Tomorrow.
Speaker: It's my pleasure to hand over to our first speaker today, as I mentioned, already introduced her, Head of Commercial Banking for the Middle East, Patricia Gomez, to make a few opening remarks.
Speaker: Patricia, over to you.
Speaker: Richard, thank you so much.
Speaker: As Richard mentioned, my name is Patricia Gomes.
Speaker: I'm responsible for our commercial banking business in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey region.
Speaker: It's a pleasure to host Vivek and Natalie.
Speaker: As Richard explained, today marks the launch of HSBC's Networks of Tomorrow report, a truly global survey that showcases the views, perspectives and outlooks on businesses and their supply chains.
Speaker: We've had responses from over 750 corporations of all sizes,
Speaker: across 14 markets, which as I mentioned, represent the key trade markets of the world.
Speaker: And this report digs into the core drivers of strategy for businesses across trade finance, risk management, sustainability, payments, currencies, and digitization.
Speaker: And trade, connecting our clients to international opportunities is the lifeblood of our business.
Speaker: It has been in our DNA since 1865 when HSBC was founded.
Speaker: And we were recently reminded again of that by being named the world's top bank for trade finance in the Euro Money Survey for an incredible sixth consecutive year.
Speaker: So that is what we're here to do.
Speaker: That is our mission, to understand the market trends in order to serve our customers better.
Speaker: Really excited for the discussion today with Natalie and Vivek.
Speaker: And with that, Richard, I'll hand it back to you to kick off the discussion.
Speaker: Patricia, thanks very much indeed.
Speaker: Well, with that, let's move on to Vivek now, who joins us live, Vivek Ramachandran.
Speaker: Vivek, before we dive into the report, and there's lots to get through, just a bit of context, if you would, please, for the audience to get to know you and the global trade and receivable finance business a little better.
Speaker: Just give us a quick overview, if you would.
Speaker: Thank you, Richard, and thanks everyone for joining.
Speaker: And I'm delighted to lead our global trade and receivables finance business.
Speaker: As Patricia said, HSBC is a trade bank in our heart.
Speaker: That's how we started, connecting clients between East and West.
Speaker: It goes to the heart of everything we do.
Speaker: It explains our footprint and it explains why we look and have the franchise that we have today.
Speaker: We facilitate almost $900 billion of trade.
Speaker: And I'm delighted, objectively, given our clients' feedback, I think we're also the best trade bank.
Speaker: And as I tell people, we are big because we're good, but we're also good because we're big.
Speaker: Our scale gives us an advantage.
Speaker: We can facilitate financing, mitigate risks, make connections, and advise our clients on supply chain challenges across multiple jurisdictions
Speaker: And because we serve clients all the way from small to mid cap to large to multinational enterprises, we can not just help our clients, we can also help their suppliers and their buyers and making connections.
Speaker: So it's a really unique proposition we've got in our global trade and receivables finance business, and I'm delighted to be leading that.
Speaker: Thanks very much indeed for that.
Speaker: Well, let's turn to this great piece of research now, the Networks of Tomorrow report, focusing on supply chains.
Speaker: Now, some of the top challenges that the respondents said were impacting their supply chain included counterparty risk was in there.
Speaker: You had regulations and border restrictions.
Speaker: Two out of three enterprises globally, 64%, to put a number on it, plan to reduce supply.
Speaker: their number of supply chain partners in the coming one or two years.
Speaker: Tell me, Vivek, what are the key drivers for this behavior?
Speaker: Over the last many decades, supply chains have evolved with one singular objective, cost minimization.
Speaker: Companies have found new suppliers in different locations to get the cheapest product possible.
Speaker: Now, this objective of cost minimization has been met.
Speaker: but it has come at an expense, fun intended here.
Speaker: It's come at the expense of transparency.
Speaker: It's come at the expense of resilience.
Speaker: And as Natalie will touch upon, it's come at the expense of risks in your supply chain, which reflect on you.
Speaker: Now companies have realized that their suppliers and their supplier behaviors and their supplier credentials impact their reputation and impact their commitments.
Speaker: So as companies look to show up who they do business with,
Speaker: how much information they get from them and how they can stand behind their suppliers, it's quite natural that you see 60 plus percent of companies actually reducing the number of suppliers.
Speaker: It's quite difficult to stay on top of everyone in your supply chain when you have hundreds of suppliers, in many cases thousands over multiple jurisdictions, and you don't get information from them.
Speaker: So that's a singular feature, but it's also easier to support your suppliers when you only focus on your strategic suppliers.
Speaker: So both resilience and transparency have forced companies to actually restrict the number of companies they're dealing with, the number of suppliers, and prioritize strategic supply relationships where they know more about their suppliers, but also where their suppliers are sourcing from.
Speaker: So let's talk about the fact that borders are opening and restrictions are thankfully now easing.
Speaker: We're seeing a degree of optimism, it seems, at the start of 2023 globally.
Speaker: Most of the business leaders in the report, I noted, are expressing a desire to expand into new markets.
Speaker: Vivek, what are your thoughts on this as the year 2023 has begun?
Speaker: I think we're all, talking to our clients, they're going into 2023 with cautious optimism.
Speaker: So supply constraints have definitely eased, whether it's port congestion, whether it's shipping costs.
Speaker: So the supply side, which has been a cause of much concern and forced companies to stock up on inventories, has actually eased over the last six months and hopefully will revert back to where we were pre-COVID levels.
Speaker: Demand uncertainty still exists.
Speaker: It's a pleasure to be doing this out of Dubai because the Middle East is one of the markets which is quite buoyant on the demand side.
Speaker: India is another market.
Speaker: China reopening bodes well.
Speaker: I think companies have the challenge of actually making their bets when they expand and making sure it's selective bets backed by strategic supplier relationships.
Speaker: So I'm not sure it's widespread optimism that's unconditional.
Speaker: But there's definitely a reason to be optimistic.
Speaker: We're looking into 2023, both on the demand side, but especially on the supply side.
Speaker: OK, well, let's talk about treasurers, big part of this equation.
Speaker: And you spoke to them, of course, for the report.
Speaker: It found that trade finance solutions are highly valued by corporate treasurers when managing their supply chains.
Speaker: Now, HSBC's global head of trade and receivables finance, you're clearly in the thick of this.
Speaker: It'd be great to hear from you your perspective on the importance of this supply chain financing.
Speaker: As a trade banker, it's obviously delightful to hear that our clients think it's important and a really vital tool to managing their working capital, showing up balance sheet.
Speaker: But what the big shift over the last five, 10 years has been trade finance, not just as an instrument to help you with your working capital and to strengthen your balance sheet, but also as a tool to help your suppliers.
Speaker: And that's where supply chain finance has become so important.
Speaker: You can incentivize suppliers to change behaviors with contracts and negotiations, but it's much more appealing in our view if you can also support them with the transitions that you want them to make through financing.
Speaker: And helping suppliers leverage your credit standing, your relationship with your bank is really important.
Speaker: Now, what the report shows, there's a huge variation when you look at days payable.
Speaker: The largest of companies, the multinationals, do that obviously much better because they have more purchasing power, more negotiating power.
Speaker: Our experience is trade finance is still an underutilized tool in the mid-market and the large corporate space.
Speaker: And companies should think about more financing, both from the payables and the receivable side.
Speaker: But the report suggests that it is high on the treasurer's agenda.
Speaker: And that's obviously a good sign because I'm biased when I say this, Richard.
Speaker: But trade financing is just a smarter way of financing your working capital requirements than a clean loan.
Speaker: Well, clearly relationships with people like you and your team are important, but so too is digital.
Speaker: It's partly a people business, it's partly a digital business.
Speaker: And the report focuses on three digital priorities.
Speaker: And I've got the top three here.
Speaker: Number one, visualized transactions.
Speaker: That's almost 50% of people.
Speaker: access and optimize working capital and seamless connection to banking solutions through online platforms or BAAS, Banking as a Service.
Speaker: So tell me, how can HSBC's digital trade solutions address the supply chain needs alongside what is happening in the financial services industry?
Speaker: Trade finance has been described as the last analog frontier in banking and we're doing our best to change that.
Speaker: One of the delights of being in the trade business in HSBC is the depth of expertise.
Speaker: So Natalie Blythe was my predecessor running the global trade business.
Speaker: And under her watch, and which I've taken over, HSBC has made a wealth of investment to digitize the client's journey.
Speaker: So today we are at a point where almost 90% of all trade transactions are initiated digitally.
Speaker: And that's a manifold increase over the last three, four, five years and a direct reflection of a simpler client journey.
Speaker: It's easier to share data with the bank.
Speaker: It's easier to actually get the data back from the bank.
Speaker: We're also investing in re-platforming our core trade business and the same platform serves SMEs, mid caps, large corporates and multinationals.
Speaker: And so it's not just that you are on the same platform, your suppliers are on the same platform.
Speaker: In many cases, they're suppliers, suppliers too.
Speaker: So whether it's visibility, whether it's reconciliation, whether it's access to tools, our trade digitalization has been on the leading edge of doing that.
Speaker: And we're excited about where we go because I'd like to change the reputation of trade as being an analogue business.
Speaker: Well, let's move on to sustainability now.
Speaker: You touched on Natalie there.
Speaker: Natalie Blythe is with us.
Speaker: Natalie, thanks for being with us today.
Speaker: Appreciate your time.
Speaker: Hi there, Richard.
Speaker: And Vivek, fantastic that you're sort of leading the charge in the world, but also the digital can come straight into sustainability as well.
Speaker: And this is interesting because Vivek touched on some of the sustainable supply chain financing examples there.
Speaker: He just touched on, hinted at them.
Speaker: But let's get a bit more detail.
Speaker: What are the things that are the driving force of enabling customers to engage in these transactions?
Speaker: What are you seeing there?
Speaker: What is the report telling us about sustainability in this sphere?
Speaker: I think building on what Vivek said, when you understand that the supply chains is the single biggest component of climate greenhouse gas emissions, so up to 80 percent as per World Trade Organization, you realize that we're not going to win this battle for climate and nature without addressing the supply chains.
Speaker: that actually SMEs are the core backbone, not just of most economies, but actually of most supply chains, it starts to get really serious.
Speaker: And it's gonna take up to 150 trillion between now and 2030 to deliver net zero.
Speaker: And half of that, up to half of it, is going to need to be directed to SMEs.
Speaker: So SMEs are right at the center.
Speaker: So that research that we have done is really important because you're seeing trends and shifts.
Speaker: You can see that 40% of organizations now are implementing environmental policies across their supply chains.
Speaker: You can see 32% of, remember, ESG sustainability is not just about climate, it's also about sort of health and wellbeing.
Speaker: 32% have put in place
Speaker: policies around health and wellness as well.
Speaker: We are actually seeing some regional differences.
Speaker: So we can see Asia PAC probably lagging a little bit against some of the metrics.
Speaker: 48% of corporates in Asia PAC have actually got no metrics in place yet at the moment.
Speaker: And that's much further back.
Speaker: than the counterparts in the sort of Western hemisphere.
Speaker: We're also sort of seeing risk management being one of the top five risks that all the corporates are focused on in their supply chains.
Speaker: And it's 10%, but it's up there with inflation, interest rate, et cetera, and currency sort of risks.
Speaker: ESG credentials, that's now in the top five when actually selecting your suppliers.
Speaker: And this is going to be really critical because this is where the SMEs are most vulnerable.
Speaker: They're not just vulnerable to sort of national policy shocks.
Speaker: Ahead of that is going to be the supply chain shocks.
Speaker: So that's when a buyer or a buyer's buyer
Speaker: is going to require certain criteria and get their selection process specifically driven around your ESG credentials.
Speaker: Can you show your data?
Speaker: Can you prove your ESG carbon footprint?
Speaker: Can you actually sort of report your ESG scoring?
Speaker: If not, there's a high risk that you're gonna be booted out.
Speaker: And this change is gonna come thick and fast.
Speaker: And if you see the report,
Speaker: with Asia being a bit of a laggard in terms of where the corporates are.
Speaker: And yet a lot of the sort of buyers being more advanced and indeed some of the regulations just take the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act that's come in into Germany, really forcing corporates with over 3000 employees to be able to look right through their supply chain base.
Speaker: and report on it.
Speaker: If that supplier can't provide the data and the information, they're gonna be booted out.
Speaker: So this is really serious for us.
Speaker: To drill down to that in a bit more detail, almost a two part question, if I may, Natalie.
Speaker: First of all, in terms of financing and investment trends, what surprised you?
Speaker: What did you notice coming out of the report?
Speaker: But also on the ground, in the real world, what are you hearing?
Speaker: What are you seeing?
Speaker: What's actually happening?
Speaker: So obviously we've got scopes one, two and three for our clients.
Speaker: So scopes one and two are really cleaning up your own house.
Speaker: So we're seeing most of that finance and investment being directed to energy efficiency, more environmental sort of friendly plant and machinery, retrofitting and making your buildings sustainable.
Speaker: change in manufacturing and operating processes and of course works of safety place as well.
Speaker: So that's really addressing the scopes one and two.
Speaker: It's easier.
Speaker: You have more control over it.
Speaker: Where it's getting harder, but we're starting to see it now, is moving into that sphere of influence up and down the sort of the supply chain.
Speaker: So
Speaker: It's a huge amount of money that's going to be required here and we've already committed that we'll be doing 750 billion to a trillion of sustainable finance between 2020 and 2030.
Speaker: And we've just reported 210.7 billion so far.
Speaker: We reported that sort of last week.
Speaker: And these are helping in all sorts of ways.
Speaker: There's a great company called Hamilton Waste in Scotland.
Speaker: They effectively completely changed their business model, but through green equipment financing facility that we provided with them.
Speaker: What they have done is they had a business model that was taking construction waste and shoving it in landfill, but that landfill tax was rising, rising, rising.
Speaker: They've now done some capex effectively, bought some new machinery and equipment.
Speaker: They have reduced the landfill.
Speaker: They recycle the goods.
Speaker: And actually they've increased, well, they've introduced a new revenue stream.
Speaker: So greenhouse gas is down, their cost of operating down and a brand new revenue stream, which is absolutely sort of, which is fantastic.
Speaker: And we're going to see more and more clients re-imagining
Speaker: and from the bottom up, what their business model will be.
Speaker: And that means again, that people in an existing supply chain are potentially quite vulnerable as their buyers are going to reconfigure.
Speaker: Natalie, thanks very much indeed for that.
Speaker: What are the major challenges and resolutions with regards to promoting sustainability and reducing climate change risk with global clients in relation to supply chain?
Speaker: When you chat to them and they say, okay, this is great, but this is my challenge, this is my problem, what do they tell you, Natalie?
Speaker: I would say that it comes into sort of two camps and they're both linked.
Speaker: The first camp is sort of engagement and is everybody on board?
Speaker: Has everybody got the same urgency?
Speaker: So it's driving the urgency that's really critical.
Speaker: And then the second one is data.
Speaker: So how can you drive urgency if you can't measure something, you can't track how it's sort of developing?
Speaker: So what we have is about three sort of
Speaker: categories of clients, those who are highly sophisticated, they've got transition plans, data coming out of their ears.
Speaker: Then we've got clients who really want to know we're going to be by their side, and that's our strategy.
Speaker: We want to partner, a trusted partner for our clients, all 1.3 or 4 million of them to transition.
Speaker: But they don't necessarily have the data.
Speaker: Then there are the smaller ones, really short on data, know-how, and resource.
Speaker: And so that's sort of financing resource.
Speaker: How can we get the data down into the sort of supply chain so that people are able to report on how they're doing?
Speaker: Again, those are the sort of critical things.
Speaker: So the urgency and the data to sort of measure.
Speaker: And Richard, if I can add to Natalie's second point on data, rising in 2023, but many, if not most global companies actually don't know who is in their supply chains beyond tier one and tier two.
Speaker: So the data point that Natalie talks about is not just to understand the credentials, but to learn about who is in your supply chain.
Speaker: And you have regulations which are dictating companies move much faster than they have been historically.
Speaker: So Germany has passed a Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, which requires companies with over 3,000 employees in Germany to attest to the absence of human trafficking anywhere in the supply chain.
Speaker: Now that's quite a bold claim to make when you don't know the raw materials, where they come from, and you can't prove that.
Speaker: So if you take the apparel sector, a shirt maker typically will know the manufacturer, would know the fabric mill, but would have very little evidence of where the yarn comes from or where the cotton comes from.
Speaker: So transparency is one of the big challenges
Speaker: And I think this is where technology has a part to play, because in the coming years, in the coming decade, we should have financing instruments that are tokenized and you can pass through the benefit of credentials through the supply chain.
Speaker: We're not there yet.
Speaker: Vivek, thanks very much.
Speaker: We're almost out of time.
Speaker: I'm going to end with a question for both of you about a story that's really inspired you in this space of someone actually making a difference, something that we can take away and think, yeah, well, if they can do it,
Speaker: We can do it.
Speaker: Vivek, first of all, to you.
Speaker: Sustainable supply chain story that's really inspired you recently.
Speaker: Thousands of client examples, but I'll pick one which is PDH, which is the umbrella brand that owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
Speaker: They've put in place a sustainable supply chain finance program with both environmental credentials and social credentials that's extended to their suppliers.
Speaker: And now hopefully we can work with them to actually extend it from the pre-shipment stage for the suppliers too.
Speaker: And so the retail and apparel sector has been notoriously hard to crack.
Speaker: But them doing it, and we've obviously been in the public domain with Levi's and Walmart and Puma, those stories are so inspiring and I think should inspire others to actually act upon this sooner than later.
Speaker: And Natalie?
Speaker: I would call out Vivo Barefoot.
Speaker: I mean, they really have revamped their supply chains, looking at making it more sustainable, completely changing their sort of manufacturing processes through some support that we've given them.
Speaker: And then also we're working real time with a garment and footwear company who are really taking to the next level the scoring of their suppliers from A to D. If you're not going to be in the top three and it's across E, S and G,
Speaker: So there's a lot of societal stuff.
Speaker: If you're not going to be in the top three, you're actually going to be booted out of the supply chain.
Speaker: And that is a huge supply chain.
Speaker: So it's moving fast at the top.
Speaker: And I think as a parting shot for me anyway, any client, business organization, just ask yourself, take a step back and up, what is the net positive of my business model?
Speaker: What is the purpose of my products and propositions?
Speaker: And how do I create value across multiple capitals, not just financial capital now, but societal capital, natural capital, human capital, et cetera?
Speaker: We'll wrap it up there, but I would say a couple of things.
Speaker: First of all, thanks to all of our speakers.
Speaker: Patricia Gomes, we appreciate her opening remarks today, Head of Commercial Banking for the Middle East.
Speaker: Natalie, thanks so much indeed for you.
Speaker: Natalie Blythe, Global Head of Sustainability for HSBC's Commercial Banking Business.
Speaker: Appreciate your time today.
Speaker: Thanks, Natalie.
Speaker: Thank you, Richard.
Speaker: And Vivek Ramachandran, really appreciate that as well.
Speaker: With a global role, Vivek, HSBC's head of global trade and receivables finance.
Speaker: Vivek, appreciate you taking time for this.
Speaker: Thanks very much indeed.
Speaker: Thank you, Richard.
Speaker: And thanks everyone for joining.
Speaker: Thanks to all of our panelists.
Speaker: But most important, thanks to you for tuning in, for listening.
Speaker: Thank you very much indeed.
Speaker: And goodbye.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us at HSBC Talks Business.
Speaker: We hope you enjoyed the discussion.
Speaker: Please do subscribe to the HSBC Talks Business channel to stay up to date with new episodes.
