How HSBC & Google Cloud are Scaling AI Across Global Banking

HSBC is set to embed AI more deeply into its global operations.

The UK-based banking group has entered a strategic partnership with Google Cloud to roll out AI capabilities across its international business, with an initial emphasis on three core areas: personalised wealth management services, financial crime risk management and AI-driven decision support for frontline employees.

Under the multi-year agreement, teams from both organisations will collaborate to develop advanced AI tools aimed at improving the personalisation of HSBC’s operations.

The bank anticipates that the initiative will enable more than 200 new AI use cases within the next two years.

The partnership will also involve engineering teams from Google Cloud and Google DeepMind, giving HSBC access to Google’s latest agentic technologies, including Gemini models and the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.

“Our partnership with HSBC is a blueprint for the future of the financial services industry," says Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.

“By accelerating AI adoption built with Gemini, our Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, forward-deployed engineers and Google DeepMind’s research expertise, HSBC is building a more intelligent, resilient and responsive bank that can create meaningful value for its customers.”

HSBC’s AI forecast

The collaboration is designed to streamline existing processes across the bank, while also helping to identify and prioritise initiatives with strong potential for high returns.

HSBC estimates these initiatives could generate more than US$100m through direct revenue uplift, as well as broader efficiency gains.

Right now, the bank reports that more than 600 of its applications are already running on Google Cloud.

Georges Elhedery, Group CEO at HSBC, says: “AI is becoming one of the defining technologies of our time, allowing us to create a personalised experience for each customer, delivered in real time and at scale, while keeping human judgement, decision-making and accountability at the core. 

“A partnership like this one with Google Cloud helps us empower our colleagues with the tools they need to be future-ready, and supports our work in building a simple, agile, faster, and more personal HSBC.”

The initial roadmap

Three key areas have been outlined as initial priorities within the partnership.

In wealth management, AI-driven insights will enable greater personalisation, equipping relationship managers with the tools to deliver tailored, real-time advice securely at every stage of the client journey.

Alongside this, HSBC will use gen AI in combination with agentic AI to strengthen financial crime and risk management.

This dual approach involves building new architecture within the financial crime function to identify risks earlier, helping to prevent harm while also delivering a more seamless customer experience.

When risks are flagged, HSBC expects response times to improve significantly, with the ability to intervene twice as quickly across the nearly one billion transactions the bank monitors for financial crime each month.

The third focus area centres on supporting employees, with the rollout of an AI-powered assistant designed to enhance frontline performance.

By cutting down time spent on administrative work and preparing for client meetings, tasks that once took hours can now be completed in minutes, the bank says.

The assistant will also translate regulatory frameworks into an AI-enabled format, helping bankers make more informed and effective decisions.

By prioritising employee-facing AI, HSBC says it can deliver faster insights while maintaining a personalised, human-led approach, “keeping human judgement at the centre”.