HSBC Expands Content, Reach of Research App on Symphony

HSBC’s Global Research division has added video content to its Research Application after recently rolling it out to clients via Symphony Communication Services’ electronic chat platform, and is planning future upgrades to take advantage of artificial intelligence to broaden the app’s appeal.

The bank made the research app available on Symphony for internal use around a year ago, and rolled it out externally to clients on Symphony a couple of months ago, officials say. Since then, it has already become one of the most popular apps on Symphony, with about 10,000 individuals who have access, of whom “thousands” of internal HSBC staff and external clients access it daily, said Alex Andronov, head of business development at HSBC Global Research, speaking at the Symphony Innovate 2019 conference last week in New York.

Within the past week, HSBC has added the ability for research analysts to record video commentary at their desk, which then—after going through an internal approval process—appears integrated in the research app alongside relevant research.

Andronov aid the bank first rolled out the app on Symphony—which is the principal internal chat system used by the Global Banking and Markets division, though not the whole of HSBC—for internal purposes, but has seen increased readership of its research as a result of making it more widely available.

“Initially, we didn’t think it would be client-facing… [but] in each channel we add, a significant number of people read the research who haven’t accessed it before,” he said. “Our plan is to go to where the customers are…. People want research to come to them. They want it available in chat because they are using chat… and we want to make it as frictionless as possible [to access our research].”

For example, as part of the app, HSBC developed a query bot for searching research from directly within Symphony chat. “So if you’re in a chat or a meeting and don’t want to load the application separately or leave the chat, you can just ask the bot,” Andronov said.

Other chat-specific features developed for the app include a hashtag search. If a chat participant tags a word with a hashtag, anyone who clicks that hashtag will be taken to a list of search results for that topic within the research app.

Future versions of the app software will include artificial intelligence that understands the types of research and topics that clients are reading, and is able to recommend other research items that they might find interesting. However, Andronov said the firm is unlikely to use that information in direct client communications, but will make it available to its salespeople.

“We want to make sure our salespeople are more effective. We’re not just saying to end-user clients, ‘Here are some things you might be interested in.’ We do have some AI things like that, but we’re going to make that available to salespeople first, for them to use in their communications with clients,” he said.