The role of our insurance business
Why does HSBC have an insurance business, HSBC Life?
As a bank we’re committed to supporting our customers’ financial resilience – as well as their physical and mental wellbeing, and opening up opportunities for them.
Our insurance business, like our in-house asset management (opens in new window) business, allows us to offer a complete range of wealth products – and means we can look after each customer’s needs, across their life stages.
Meeting customer needs
We serve the full range of customers, from millennials looking for their first guaranteed savings solutions, to young adults buying their first life insurance plan, parents planning for their children’s education and their own retirement, all the way to high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients needing estate division and legacy planning.
We’re there for them whenever they face unexpected events or adversity. They are supported by our manufacturing capabilities, brokerage partnerships and strategic partners.
And it’s not just retail customers. We also cater for our corporate clients’ needs through providing employee benefits for their staff and other essential products, such as ‘key people’ insurance, which protect companies’ most valuable assets.
How we stand out
HSBC Life’s key differentiator is the value of our network. Being part of HSBC’s International Wealth and Premier Banking business means we can give customers a holistic approach that they cannot get elsewhere.
We connect our claims technology with the bank’s payments technology to make things easier and simpler for our clients. Our medical insurance clients in Hong Kong, for example, can submit and receive their claims payments in just five minutes, rather than the five days that the rest of the industry takes.
Not only does this benefit customers, but it also benefits our network of more than 2,000 doctors and clinicians – simply, they get paid for their work quicker.
Our network also enables us to give clients access to opportunities that our competitors cannot. A key example is how we design our savings plans. As an institutional investor with more than US$100 billion in assets, we are able to pool our portfolios with HSBC Asset Management.
This means we can offer retail wealth customers access to higher yielding alternative asset classes, such as private equity and infrastructure debt, that would be otherwise inaccessible.
Inclusion
Inclusion is at the heart of everything we do at HSBC Life. We were a founding signatory of the UN Principles for Sustainable Insurance. But it goes beyond that.
Our products and services are designed with inclusivity front of mind – taking into account changes in society, demographics and medical advances. And crucially, where our products fall short of being inclusive, we adapt them.
For example, in Hong Kong we were one of the first to recognise same-sex and co-habiting couples in life insurance policies, which was a huge breakthrough in the industry.
Insurance within HSBC
HSBC Life is an accelerator and differentiator for HSBC’s wealth management franchise, which is a key strategic priority and growth area for the bank.
We are the leading insurer in Hong Kong, and insurance contributed more than one-third of fee and other income in 2025 in the bank’s International Wealth and Premier Banking business.
The nature of our products also means that we’re an enabler of long-term client relationships. Our products typically have a life of more than 20 years. This affords us the privileged position of having deep, long-standing relationships with our customers, so we can offer them a much more personalised, bespoke service.
What’s next
HSBC Life’s momentum remains strong, with a growth rate that continues to stand out. We aim to strengthen our position as a trusted insurer for high-net-worth customers.
We’re already making progress. We delivered a record-breaking life insurance policy valued at US$250 million – and we see further opportunities ahead.
We will also integrate more deeply into HSBC’s digital banking platforms, making it quicker and easier for customers to manage their portfolios and connect with us.
The more we work together across the Group, the greater the benefits for our clients – and the scale of the opportunity is significant, with more to come.
Global trends in insurance
There are a number of key global trends that make insurance more relevant and powerful than ever before.
- Interest rate uncertainty: During economic and market volatility, people tend to adopt a ‘risk-off’ attitude and make more defensive financial decisions, such as protecting their wealth, their assets and their families through insurance products.
- Growth of the middle class: By 2030, a further 700 million people are expected to join the global middle class, making it more than half of the world’s total population. With a rise in wealth, insurance becomes an aspirational asset and a vehicle to improved quality of life through private healthcare, private savings, and planning for retirement and children’s education.
- The world is rapidly ageing: There is a growing global retirement savings gap. Preventing this from escalating further will require a renewed focus on planning for older age, with insurers leading the way in managing longevity risk.
- Rise of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals: By 2030, we estimate that there will be 22 million millionaires in Asia, up from 10 million in 2022. Life insurance is key to structuring legacy and estate planning. There is currently a wave of first-generation private wealth starting to transfer assets to the next generation – by 2030, more than US$18.3 trillion is expected to be transferred.
HSBC Life
Our global insurance business helps customers to embrace their future with confidence.