HSBC X Sinch: Trusted banking delivered through billions of messages

One of the world’s leading international banks, HSBC sends hundreds of millions of messages to customers across all retail and commercial banking markets every month.

Those vast numbers of SMS, email, push notifications and in-app messages are fundamental to modern banking. Nearly every customer interaction or transaction depends on timely, reliable communication.

“Without a reliable partner to deliver timely messaging, our core customer journeys would be interrupted or suspended,” says Phoenix H Y Li, Head of Messaging at HSBC.

The implications of that are wide-reaching and serious. If customers can’t transact, it erodes revenue and trust. The stakes are even higher when you consider the role finances play in every aspect of a customer’s life, from buying groceries to growing a business.

For more than a decade, HSBC has trusted Sinch’s SMS API to support its global messaging infrastructure and ensure consistent, secure customer communications.

“Which is precisely why we need a reliable partner to help us navigate and manage these complexities,” says Phoenix.

Adding even more complexity to managing the bank’s messaging, each of HSBC’s markets has different regulations around delivery, authentication and compliance for different kinds of messaging.

“For critical communications like OTP and high-risk notifications, we must send messages in a timely manner often within seconds. If we fail to meet these timelines, we are required to report it to regulators, which comes with a risk of penalty,” explains Phoenix.

“Most importantly, to HSBC, any delay can impact customer experiences, and their day-to-day lives.”

With the previous platform, HSBC had little visibility over this deliverability.

“We lacked detail on message history and which messages had been blocked by carriers,” Phoenix says.

By contrast, with Sinch, Phoenix gets daily statistics on any blocked or failed messages allowing her to take fast action.

“Sinch is an exceptionally reliable partner. Their agility and rapid turnaround times ensure our communications are always seamlessly delivered,” says Phoenix.

Sinch’s proactive support was especially valuable when China telcos introduced strict new SMS regulations, adding mandatory registration and whitelisting requirements to an already complex A2P messaging environment.

Carriers began blocking non-registered messages sent to customers in China, impacting enterprises across industries, including HSBC. HSBC had to collect more than 10,000 messaging templates for registration and apply required content changes. This could have taken more than a year of co-ordination, development and testing across different platforms and markets. This delay was unacceptable and could have left the bank open to penalty.

Sinch worked closely with local carriers to support HSBC through this transition. By enabling authentication and facilitating whitelisting, Sinch helped ensure continued deliverability for existing and new messaging templates.

“Sinch’s rapid responses, daily support and deep collaboration have proven their value during this time.” The success of this mitigation management was highly commended by senior executives, including market COOs, and Phoenix was asked to help other departments.

“Internal teams who were using other partners had found themselves at a standstill. We were able to share our experience, offer guidance and connect them with Sinch to resolve their challenges.”

This established a scalable approach for managing future regulatory changes.

“We’re seeing similar trends in markets such as Taiwan and Ireland,” says Phoenix. “Sinch keeps us informed and ahead of these changes, applying what we learned from the China A2P transition to respond more efficiently.”

With the sheer volume of messaging and markets the team deals with, Phoenix says issues always crop up. Sinch’s remarkable level of support helps Phoenix and her team sidestep the usual processes that inevitably slow down response times.

“Some partners rely strictly on standard support processes. Sinch takes a more proactive approach, working with us directly to resolve issues efficiently,” she explains.

She says Sinch goes well beyond just a messaging platform – the team anticipates and solves future problems.

“Sinch doesn’t just help us solve issues when they happen. They help us anticipate changes in the market and respond before customer communications are impacted.”

Email remains a key channel in HSBC’s communication strategy and the bank was looking to identify opportunities to further enhance performance.

Phoenix turned to Sinch first, building on a decade-long trusted partnership.

“We ran workshops with Sinch to understand their products and market benchmarks across channels like email, WhatsApp and push notifications,” she explains.

The review found that HSBC would benefit from stronger visibility and deliverability controls, improved sender reputation management and more reliable email infrastructure. Using Mailgun would help support these requirements at scale.

This would be essential for keeping critical customer communications in inboxes instead of spam folders.

Phoenix says the implementation and service more than met her expectations, reinforcing HSBC’s confidence in Sinch. “Sinch really listens, tailoring solutions to suit our operational and deliverability requirements.”

As part of its evolving strategy, HSBC is also working with Sinch to explore new channel experiences, such as RCS and WhatsApp.

“We are looking at next-generation channels and customer experiences to communicate more securely and reliably, while continuing to deliver to changing customer behaviours.”

Over more than a decade, the relationship between HSBC and Sinch has evolved to support a wide range of communication needs and that’s just the beginning. With RCS and WhatsApp messaging on the horizon, Phoenix knows she’s working with the right people.

“They provide value beyond the contract, including market insights, use case sharing, and co-creation, “ Phoenix concludes. “This is a true partnership, not just a service provider relationship.”