HSBC expands its South Asian wealth footprint, appointing industry veteran Gautam Anand as Head of Global India for HSBC Private Bank.
Industry veteran Gautam Anand took over as HSBC’s head of Global India, HSBC Private Bank at the end of April. In his new role, Anand leads the bank’s private banking operations for Indian clients and has a mandate to expand connections in key wealth markets, including Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates.
Anand most recently served as global coordinator for Global India, Middle East, North Africa, and Europe at HSBC Private Bank. He now reports jointly to Tommy Leung, head of Private Banking for South Asia, and Aladdin Hangari, head of Private Banking for the MENAT region, covering the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey.
Anand brings significant qualifications to his role as leader of the cross-border franchise, including a professional career spanning more than 25 years in private banking, wealth management and investment banking.
Before joining HSBC in 2023, he built a track record in the South Asian diaspora wealth space with UBS Group AG, Credit Suisse, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), and ABN AMRO Bank NV.
HSBC EXPANSION PUSH
The leadership move comes as London-based HSBC aggressively expands its footprint in South Asia to keep pace with shifting global wealth dynamics. The bank launched its onshore private banking business in India in 2023, targeting tech entrepreneurs, family offices, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. The Global India platform offers a mix of alternative investments, open-end mutual funds, discretionary portfolio management services, and structured insurance solutions. To qualify, clients must have more than $2 million net in high-net-worth individual investable assets.
The 2023 launch marked a major U-turn for HSBC, which had exited India’s domestic private banking market in 2016 as part of a global corporate restructuring. Its re-entry was driven by powerful macroeconomic tailwinds, specifically India’s overtaking the United Kingdom in 2022 to become the world’s fifth-largest economy. It also represents a critical pillar of HSBC’s multi-billion-dollar strategic pivot to Asian wealth management, which began with a sequenced rollout that successfully deployed similar onshore private banking capabilities in Thailand in 2021, followed by Mexico, the UAE, and mainland China the following year.
This article appears in the June 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.
