Privacy statement

15  August  2005

This privacy statement sets out the privacy policy of hsbc.com, inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the financial holding company, HSBC North America, Inc. hsbc.com, inc. provides a portal, or gateway, to the financial services offered by members of the HSBC Group.

hsbc.com,inc. is incorporated in New Jersey, U.S.A. under registered number 22-3186825.Its principal place office is 545 Washington Boulevard, Jersey City , New Jersey, U.S.A. 07310 and the address of its registered agent in New Jersey is 820, Bear Tavern Road, West Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A. 08628.

hsbc.com, inc., hosts the HSBC Group website and provides technical support, access and links to the Local Sites of HSBC Group members. hsbc.com, inc., does not offer financial services or products. Financial services and products may only be obtained by registering with a Local Site. For more information on how to use this website, please see the Terms and Conditions of Use.

The HSBC Group provides financial products and services through its affiliated companies and branches located in 79 countries and territories. Privacy and personal data protection principles vary from one country to another. When you access or link to a Local Site, please read the privacy statement issued by the Local Site to determine the policies that apply to information or data maintained by the Local Site.

Cookies

This website, along with most other major websites, use cookies. Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to the cookie file on your computer’s hard disk. Cookies enable users to navigate around the website and (where appropriate) enable us to tailor the content to fit the needs of visitors who have accessed the site.

hsbc.com, inc. uses two types of cookie on this website:

1. Session cookies, which are temporary cookies that remain in the cookie file of your computer until you close your browser (at which point they are deleted).
2. Persistent or stored cookies that remain permanently on the cookie file of your computer.

Cookies cannot look into your computer and obtain information about you or your family or read any material kept on your hard drive and, unless you have logged onto an authenticated page, cookies cannot be used to identify who you are.

Cookies cannot be used by anyone else who has access to the computer to find out anything about you, other than the fact that someone using the computer has visited a certain website. Cookies do not in any way compromise the security of your computer.

Cookies will not be used to contact you for marketing purposes other than by means of advertisements offered within this website.

Cookies may be used to record details of pages relating to particular products and services that you have visited on this website. This is to provide hsbc.com, inc. with generic usage statistics to allow the company to improve this website and to provide you with information that may interest you.

In order to develop this website in line with customer needs hsbc.com, inc. is working with WebTrends to track usage on this website. WebTrends provide hsbc.com, inc. with statistics to show which pages on this website are visited most frequently and how long visitors spend on this website.

WebTrends uses a cookie to track the number of unique users of this website. It basically tells hsbc.com, inc. whether the website has a small number of regular visitors or a large number of infrequent visitors. None of the information can be traced to an individual - hsbc.com, inc. do not know who you are as a unique user, merely that there are a certain number of people using this website. The cookie only relates to what goes on in this website and the information cannot be used for marketing on an individual basis.

For more information about how WebTrends collects data, please read their privacy policy at https://ondemand.webtrends.com/privacypolicy.asp#PSFV.

The web browsers of most computers are initially set up to accept cookies. If you prefer, you can set your web browser to disable cookies or to inform you when a website is attempting to add a cookie. You can also delete cookies that have previously been added to your computer’s cookie file.

You can set your browser to disable persistent cookies and/or session cookies but if you disable session cookies, although you will be able to view this website’s unsecured pages, you may not be able to log onto any authenticated pages.

Please visit http://www.allaboutcookies.org/manage-cookies/ to discover how to disable and delete cookies.

Web beacons and spotlight tags

This website may contain electronic images, known as web beacons or spotlight tags. These enable hsbc.com, inc. to count users who have visited certain pages on the website. Web beacons and spotlight tags are simply tools used to obtain generic information about the web pages visited. They are not used to obtain information about specific users.