Scottish Financial Services Sector welcomes expansion from HSBC and Virgin Money in 2011

Financial Sector welcomes new investment by leading banks

HSBC SET TO DOUBLE SCOTTISH BRANCH NETWORK IN 2011 WITH £9 MILLION INVESTMENT

HSBC announced its intention to invest £9 million in extending its branch network in Scotland, creating over 100 new jobs and doubling its footprint this year.

The bank, which currently has six branches in Scotland, is set to open its first ever branch in Stirling this summer to bolster its Central Scotland offering. This will be followed by a new state-of-the-art branch and commercial centre in Dundee, and a major new branch development in Aberdeen.

Additional branches in new locations including Falkirk, Dumfries and Hamilton are also currently being explored.

Each new branch will offer the full range of retail and business banking services, including dedicated business banking advisors to look after customers within the branch.

HSBC in Scotland has been steadily and consistently growing its operations in Scotland, recently reporting over 20 per cent growth in income across its SME and retail divisions. Quality customer acquisition has been key to the bank realising its growth potential and the branch investment has been made to sustain and accelerate this growth into 2011.

John Rendall, CEO of HSBC in Scotland said:

“This significant investment underlines HSBC’s confidence in Scotland, its businesses and its people.

“Our growth strategy is focused purely on opportunity and demand. Over the past year, we’ve increased our business and retail lending, increased our SME and personal banking customer base, and experienced an uplift in demand for our services – from premier banking right through to corporate and structured banking.

“We understand that maintaining quality service for existing customers and accelerating our growth rate requires us to continually invest in our teams and our branches.

“From meeting and speaking with customers and prospects, we’ve been encouraged by how receptive people have been to HSBC in Scotland. We know our international capabilities continue to attract exciting small business through to stand out global giants, and our premier offering continues to attract premium customers, with an increase of 63.3 per cent last year alone.

“By increasing our visibility, we believe we have a real opportunity to continue to attract people to HSBC and bring a new banking dimension to areas where we previously haven’t had a presence.

“HSBC’s heritage is deeply rooted in Scotland and we’re very much looking forward to continuing to build the business throughout 2011 and beyond.”

Virgin Money have also announced plans for its new headquarter in Edinburgh with chief executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia stating that "We are planning to grow significantly in 2011 and needed a central location with good transport links"

The firm, which already has some 80 staff in the Scottish capital, wants to hire about 300 people to strengthen its administration teams before it launches new products and services in late 2011 or 2012.

The firm bought the lease on office space in St Andrew Square from Heineken, formerly Scottish & Newcastle, in the largest property deal in Edinburgh since 2009.

Virgin Money will move into its new headquarters in the summer.

Chief executive Jayne-Anne Gadhia said: “We are planning to grow significantly in 2011 and needed a central location with good transport links.”

She said Scotland has a “solid reputation” for financial services.

The company, which has more than 2.5 million customers, was founded in Norwich in 1995 as a joint venture between Richard Branson's Virgin Group and the then Norwich Union.

It said it would retain the Norwich office, which employs about 250 people, as well as sites in London and Yeovil following the opening of the Edinburgh office.