Covid-19: 12 banks in Hong Kong including HSBC, Standard Chartered and BOCHK to halt weekend services

Standard Chartered, CMB Wing Lung and China Citic will close all outlets every Saturday from February 26 until further notice
Other banks including HSBC, Hang Seng Bank and BOCHK to follow suit from March 5

Banking & finance

Enoch Yiu

Published: 8:30am, 26 Feb 2022

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Twelve Hong Kong banks, including note-issuing lenders HSBC, Standard Chartered and Bank of China (Hong Kong) (BOCHK), will suspend all banking services on Saturdays starting this week and the next until further notice.

Standard Chartered, CMB Wing Lung, China Citic, and OCBC Wing Hang Bank will close all outlets every Saturday from February 26 until further notice. HSBC, Hang Seng Bank, BOCHK, Bank of East Asia, China Construction Bank (Asia), Bank of Communications (Hong Kong), Citibank and Dah Sing Bank will follow suit from March 5.

“Since the fifth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic started in January, the number of infections in the banking sector has been growing,” said a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the de facto central bank. “The HKMA has not specified a percentage of bank branches that banks have to open or close. This is a decision to be made by individual banks having regard to their own circumstances,” she said.

Even before the suspension of weekend services, 20 major banks had already started temporarily closing branches. As of Friday, this number stood at 550, or half of all 1,100 bank branches in the city. The lenders closed about 200 branches starting February 7, but the number has jumped because of safety concerns or Covid-19 infections among staff members. The closure of branches is in its third week now.

Hong Kong's bank branch closures as of February 25

Bank	Number of Branch Closures	Full Suspension of Branch Services on Saturday
HSBC	51	Yes **
Hang Seng Bank	46	Yes **
BOCHK	124	Yes **
Standard Chartered	45	Yes *
Bank of East Asia	28	Yes**
ICBC Asia	34	No
CCB Asia	19	Yes **
OCBC Wing Hang	5	Yes *
CMB Wing Lung	19	Yes *
Shanghai Commercial Bank	30	No
China Citic Bank	16	Yes*
Bank of Communications HK	19	Yes**
Chiyu Bank	12	No
Citibank	5	Yes**

^{* All branches suspend services on every Saturday from February 26 until further notice}

^{** All branches suspend services on every Saturday from March 5 until further notice}

^{Sources Hong Kong Association of Banks and individual banks}

Other banks, such as ICBC Asia, Chong Hing Bank, DBS, Chiyu Bank, Shanghai Commercial Bank, Nanyang Commercial Bank and Fubon Bank, will continue to offer banking services on Saturdays.

Some bank branches needed to be closed temporarily for deep cleaning after cases were reported, but lenders also needed to close branches to reduce the flow of people in the community, the HKMA spokeswoman said. “The HKMA will continue to stay in close touch with the banks and provide necessary help to them in updating their business continuity plans as the pandemic situation evolves,” she added.

Hong Kong banks are feeling the pain from branch closures amid Covid spike

BOCHK, which has the largest network in the city, has closed the most number of branches – 124 or almost two-thirds of its outlets.

HSBC had as of Friday closed 51 branches, or half of its network, while Hang Seng Bank, its subsidiary, had shut down 46 outlets. Maggie Ng, head of wealth and personal banking for Hong Kong at HSBC, said the bank had offered a lot of digital services to customers who had been more accepting of such services.

“In January, there was double-digit growth year on year in the number of HSBC’s mobile active customers,” she said. “At the same time, the number of logins to the HSBC Hong Kong mobile app also rose 10 per cent year on year in January, and there was also a visible increase when compared to December last year.”

Brokers, banks shut outlets as Hong Kong hunkers down for Covid-19

The bank will continue to improve and optimise services delivered through its branch network and digital channels, Ng added.

Standard Chartered has closed 45 outlets, or more than 60 per cent of all its branches. This was higher than the lender’s target of keeping two-thirds of its branches open amid the pandemic, a spokeswoman said. “However, due to infections among branch staff or precautionary measures taken to sanitise the branch, the total number of branches that remain open may vary everyday,” she said.