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HSBC, other banks cut Hong Kong mortgage borrowers some slack as coronavirus outbreak sends small businesses into tailspin

  • HSBC, Citigroup are letting borrowers pay only the interest on their mortgages for up to a year, following the relief extended by Bank of China (Hong Kong) and other banks
  • DBS and ICBC Asia have followed with relief measures for their customers

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Pedestrians wearing protective masks walk past the HSBC logo on a hoarding in Hong Kong on January 31, 2020. Photo: Bloomberg
Chad Bray
Hong Kong's banks piled in on Thursday to offer additional relief to homeowners and businesses to support an economy hit hard first by months of anti-government protests and now by the coronavirus outbreak.

HSBC and Citigroup were among the latest banks to say they would allow residential mortgage borrowers in Hong Kong to make interest-only payments for up to a year. Homeowners held HK$1.44 trillion (US$185 billion) in mortgages at the end of December, according to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA).

DBS, Singapore’s biggest bank, said on Thursday it would extend a series of measures to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the city, including allowing interest-only payments on commercial mortgages. Hong Kong is DBS’s largest market outside Singapore and accounted for about 22 per cent of its profit last year.

HSBC, the biggest of Hong Kong’s three currency-issuing banks, also said it was offering relief loans of up to HK$30,000 per person to staff in the aviation, hotel and catering and retail industries, some of the hardest hit sectors of the local economy, as a viral outbreak kept visitors away and sent consumption into a tailspin.

“We hope these measures will bring some relief to those who are under stress from the economic fallout of Covid-19, allowing them to focus on getting through these critical days without having to worry about their finances,” HSBC’s Hong Kong chief executive, Diana Cesar, said.

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