British financial giant HSBC will hire more than 100 artificial intelligence (AI) specialists and 100 wealth managers in Singapore, a move that will help the bank deepen its investment in two areas central to the organisation’s Asian growth strategy as it expands higher-fee businesses and accelerates AI adoption.
The announcement comes as HSBC moves to launch a new AI centre in Singapore in the second half of 2026.
“We’re launching a Global AI Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Singapore in the second half of 2026 to develop artificial intelligence capabilities that can be scaled across our global network. The CoE will initially focus on enhancing customer wealth journey conversations, introducing agentic treasury solutions and developing AI-enabled digital payments,” the venture remarked.
The decision of hiring 100 AI specialists comes amid the banking group’s push into cutting-edge technology. Chief Executive Georges Elhedery said in May 2026 that AI would destroy and create certain jobs in the financial industry and that the bank was retraining its workforce to meet the challenge.
“The CoE aims to build a pipeline of talent across natural language processing, data science, AI governance, and human-centred design, and we’ll work with world-leading educational institutions and government bodies in Singapore,” HSBC said.
Elhedery remarked, “The new AI Centre of Excellence in Singapore will help drive our global AI vision – to empower our colleagues to use AI to create a personalised experience for each customer and deliver it safely, in real time and at scale, while keeping human judgement, decision-making and accountability at the core.”
The centre will initially focus on priority areas like personalising customer wealth management conversations, introducing agentic treasury solutions, and expanding AI-enabled digital payments.
While HSBC’s AI pivot focuses on retraining its staff with the technology, rival Standard Chartered’s tech transformation would eliminate about 8,000 jobs internally.
HSBC is also looking to boost its local wealth management operation by adding another 100 relationship managers. Last week, it agreed to sell its life and health insurance business in Singapore to Allianz for SUSD 2.7 billion (USD 2.1 billion) with the goal of trimming non-core operations while focusing on its Asian wealth and wholesale banking businesses.