HSBC Holdings plc 2025 results

"2025 was a year of decisive action and swift execution, which is reflected in our strong performance. Each of our four businesses performed well and we have strong momentum across the bank. That is why we are raising our ambition and targeting a 17% RoTE or better, excluding notable items, in each year from 2026 to 2028. We are also targeting year-on-year revenue growth over the same period on the same basis, rising to 5% in 2028. We are becoming a simple, more agile, focused bank, one that moves with the speed our customers need to navigate the modern world. We are delivering growth, investing for growth and we are executing our strategy with discipline and precision. That gives us confidence in our ability to continue delivering for our shareholders."

It is with great pride that I have begun my tenure as Group Chairman of HSBC. I am truly privileged to serve such a remarkable institution, working alongside exceptionally talented colleagues.

Our 161-year history is firmly rooted in the objective set by HSBC's founders - to establish a bank in Hong Kong and Shanghai that would facilitate local and international trade.

By not losing sight of that foundational objective and by remaining true to our purpose and values, we have focused on what matters most - our customers - moving forward together through these most complex of times.

Building on that forward momentum, the Board and I will continue to closely partner with our highly capable CEO, Georges Elhedery, and his management team who are accelerating the execution of our strategy, with discipline and confidence.

A key catalyst for achieving that acceleration was the introduction in January 2025 of our new organisational structure centred on our four businesses: Hong Kong, the UK, Corporate and Institutional Banking, and International Wealth and Premier Banking.

By halving the number of operating businesses and significantly streamlining the new Operating Committee of the Group, we embarked on a journey to become a simple and more agile organisation; a modern institution that reflects its cherished legacy, while embracing technological advances as a core enabler of future growth, competitiveness, and, ultimately, customer aspirations.

Today, HSBC is clear on its core strengths, investing to further develop our competitive advantages and deliver sustainable growth, with an entirely attainable ambition to be the most trusted bank globally, putting customers at the heart of everything we do.

Global growth in 2025 was stronger than expected, as the tariff-related headwinds were offset by the significant momentum generated by AI capital expenditure and trade growth, and by the support provided by the ever-resilient US consumer.

The global geopolitical context was marked by continued uncertainty. The war in Ukraine, which has entered its fifth year, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, continue to have significant human consequences.

In parallel, the changing approach to global trade relations has increased economic uncertainty. But as the resilience of global trade growth demonstrates, the inter-connectedness of the global economy, underpinned by growing trade flows, is compelling.

Faced with the re-configuration of the globalised world, HSBC is optimally positioned to help our customers capture the meaningful opportunities that are driving the global economy forward, across geographies and throughout our unique global network. Our strong financial performance and material returns in 2025 point to that dynamic, along with our focused approach to implementing our strategic priorities.

In 2025, we delivered reported profit before tax of $29.9bn. Our return on average tangible equity was 13.3%, or 17.2% excluding the impact of notable items.

We delivered material returns for our shareholders. The Board approved a fourth quarterly dividend of $0.45 per share, bringing the total dividend announced for 2025 to $0.75 per share. In addition, we announced two share buy-backs in respect of 2025 worth a total of $6bn.

Dividends paid in 2025, together with a more than 49% increase in the share price, delivered a total shareholder return for the year of more than 57%.

With our realigned structure providing a decisive impetus, we achieved broad-based profit generation through geographic and business diversification. Our performance reflects that, as does our ability to invest for growth, while continuing to optimise cost and capital allocation. Indeed, we are keeping to our committed objective of delivering $1.5bn of organisational simplification savings and expect to have taken the relevant actions to achieve it by the end of June 2026, which is six months earlier than planned.

Against this backdrop, we believe that the privatisation of Hang Seng Bank is a milestone development that brings together two seminal institutions that have served Hong Kong - a home market for the Group - for generations. We are absolutely committed to building on that valued legacy. While respecting Hang Seng's heritage and retaining its brand and distinct customer proposition, we will continue to invest and build on the complementary strengths of our businesses, to the benefit of our valued customers and the communities that we serve.

Our ambition remains to become a net zero bank by 2050. Supporting our customers is core to our strategy - financing their transition is both critical to them and aligned to our net zero ambition.

In November 2025, we published our updated Net Zero Transition Plan, setting out our commercially-grounded sustainability strategy, which reflects the realities of an evolving global transition. We also set out our updated interim financed emissions targets, metrics and associated policies, seeking to remain science-aligned and compatible with our own net zero ambition.

We believe that supporting our customers' transition is one of the most significant roles we can play in the global transition to net zero. We aim to provide and facilitate between $750bn and $1tn of sustainable finance and investment by 2030. In 2025, we provided and facilitated $102bn in sustainable finance and investment, bringing our cumulative total to $495.6bn since January 2020. This puts us on track to meet our target by 2030.

As I begin my first full year as Group Chairman, I want to acknowledge and pay tribute to Sir Mark Tucker's remarkable leadership and exemplary commitment to the Group.

Over a period of eight years, Mark helped steer HSBC through a number of unprecedented challenges - a global pandemic, decades-high inflation and profound shifts in the trade and geopolitical landscape - leaving the Group more profitable, resilient, and strongly positioned for accelerated growth. I am very grateful to him for the trusted partnership, friendship, and his support in ensuring a smooth handover.

We also announced the appointment of Wei Sun Christianson as an independent non-executive Director, with effect from 1 January 2026. Wei brings extensive banking and regulatory experience gained over a 30-year international career, including as Co-CEO of Asia Pacific at Morgan Stanley.

Ann Godbehere will be stepping down as a Director of the Company and retire from the Board at our 2026 AGM. I want to thank Ann for her considerable contributions to the HSBC Board.

In October, we announced the appointment of Angela McEntee as Group Company Secretary with effect from 1 January 2026.

In 2025, the Board held meetings in Hong Kong, India, and London. These were invaluable opportunities to meet with valued clients, government representatives, regulators and colleagues.

We also had productive engagements with our shareholders on important Group-related issues at our Annual General Meeting in London and at the Informal Meeting of our Hong Kong Shareholders.

We expect the global economy to expand in 2026. Despite significant policy uncertainty, global trade is also set to grow, supported by the expansion of new trade corridors and the boom in AI hardware demand. Inflation should continue drifting downward, although with divergence across markets. Somewhat uneven growth across industries and geographies could contribute to periodic financial volatility.

In China, a stronger policy push should anchor its growth, and we expect it to broadly maintain its expansion pace of recent years, as structural reforms start to gain traction. As part of its continued economic transformation, the emphasis will be on strengthening domestic demand - particularly consumption, but also investment. Services consumption will benefit from government policy priorities, as will technology development. Hong Kong will continue to benefit as the super-connector between mainland China and the rest of the world. Buoyant markets and improvements in consumption are expected to support its growth this year.

Elsewhere in Asia, robust consumption and rising exports generated impressive growth in a number of markets, in ASEAN in particular. That combination is expected to continue in 2026. In India, domestic demand will likely be the main driver of growth, reflecting robust consumption, as well as ongoing government infrastructure investment.

Economic diversification continues in the Middle East, with deep capital reserves being deployed into significant investments in infrastructure, technology, and human capital. The Asia-Middle East trade, investment, and travel corridor continues to grow.

Europe's economy will be supported by fiscal expansion, particularly in Germany, coupled with lower effective interest rates and steady consumption growth. We see euro area growth maintaining its recent pace over the next year. In the UK, greater fiscal headroom should give markets and businesses more confidence. Lower expected inflation and interest rates should provide a tailwind for consumption growth.

The US should be a key driver of global growth, reaping the benefits of sizeable investments in AI, tax cuts and incentives, as well as substantial deregulation.

I will end where I began, by recognising and wholeheartedly thanking our HSBC colleagues. They are the ones who deliver for our customers, day in and day out, with excellence, dedication, and respect.

They are the backbone of the Group, embodying our high-performance culture. Their commitment to our customers and to maintaining and further strengthening the relationships we have built with them is what set us apart in 2025 and what will help us thrive going forward, to the benefit of our shareholders.

Group Chairman

25 February 2026

In previous letters I set out a clear agenda to unlock HSBC's full potential. 2025 marked a year of decisive action and swift execution. We are performing, transforming and investing for growth as demand for globally-connected financial services increases, especially in the world's fastest-growing regions.

We have aligned our structure with our strategy and strengthened our four complementary businesses. We are becoming a simple, more agile, focused bank built for a fast-changing world. One that stays true to our strong foundations and hallmark financial strength yet moves with the speed our customers need to navigate the modern world.

The dynamic market environment shows why our global network, deep local expertise built over generations and financial strength set us apart. It also shows why our customers continue to turn to us as their reliable and trusted financial partner.

Last February, we set out a three-year target of a mid-teens return on average tangible equity ('RoTE') in each of the three years from 2025 to 2027, excluding notable items. We made clear progress against this target in 2025. That is why we are now raising our ambition and targeting 17% RoTE or better in each year from 2026 to 2028, excluding notable items. We are also targeting year-on-year revenue growth over the same period rising to 5% in 2028 compared with 2027, excluding notable items. We maintain our dividend payout ratio target basis of 50% in 2026, 2027 and 2028. Our target basis payout ratio is calculated as a percentage of EPS, excluding material notable items and related impacts.

On a reported basis, profit before tax of $29.9bn fell 7% year-on-year due to the impact of notable items. These included dilution and impairment losses of $2.1bn related to BoCom, legal provisions of $1.4bn and $1.0bn of restructuring and other related costs associated with our organisational simplification. On this basis, we delivered a RoTE of 13.3%.

Excluding notable items, our RoTE was 17.2% achieving our 'mid-teens, or better' target. Our revenue increased 5% year-on-year to $71bn and our profit before tax grew 7% to $36.6bn, excluding notable items on a constant currency basis. Our common equity tier 1 ('CET1') capital ratio was 14.9%, reflecting our long-standing financial strength.

We maintained tight cost discipline, managing target basis cost growth to around 3%, thereby achieving our target. This strong performance enabled us to announce a total ordinary dividend per share for 2025 of $0.75, or $12.9bn, an increase of 14% on the prior year. In addition, we completed $6bn of share buy-backs taking total returns to $18.9bn.

Our four businesses are built on customer trust and performed well. Revenue and deposits grew in each and all four delivered RoTE of mid-teens, or better, excluding notable items. We saw growth accelerate in areas of core strength and we are actively investing in modern technology to enhance innovation, productivity and customer experience.

Turning to business-line performance on a year-on-year and constant currency basis, our market-leading Hong Kong business generated revenue of $15.9bn, or 6% growth. Our deposit base grew by 7% to more than $540bn, helping us maintain our number one position in Hong Kong with market share of 25%. Our UK business delivered revenue of $12.9bn, an increase of 5%, supported by robust balance sheet growth with customer loans increasing by 6% to more than $300bn. CIB increased revenue by 3% to $27.6bn, and we generated $13.1bn of fee and other income, which was 7% higher than the prior year.

In 2025, we facilitated around $900bn in trade, which is comparable to the economic output of a G20 economy. This represents the equivalent of around $2.5bn of goods and services moving through our global network every single day. This scale, which gives access to 86% of world trade flows, is why we were voted in a survey of 13,000 corporates as Euromoney's 'World's Best Trade Finance Bank' for the ninth consecutive year. Across our network we processed around $500tn of payment transactions in 130 currencies, equivalent to almost $1bn every minute. That is why 30,000 customers surveyed by Euromoney voted HSBC the number one payments bank in products, services and technology.

In IWPB, revenue was $14.5bn, an increase of 5%. Wealth fee and other income across all our businesses was $9.4bn, up 24%. At 31 December 2025, bank-wide Wealth balances were $2.1tn, of which more than $1tn was booked in Asia, reflecting our position as the leading wealth manager in Asia and the Middle East. Given the importance of managing customer deposits as well as their invested assets, we are changing our wealth disclosures. In 2026, we will replace Invested assets (2025: $1.5tn) with a new calculation of Wealth balances. The new disclosure adds our wealth customers' deposits of $608bn and removes $580bn of Asset Management third-party distribution assets. On this new basis, Wealth balances in 2025 were $1.6tn.

In 2025, we were pleased to update our Net Zero Transition Plan, which reaffirms our ambition to become a net zero bank by 2050 and emphasises the importance of supporting our customers in their transitions.

We expect to have taken action to deliver our $1.5bn organisational simplification saves by the first half of 2026, six months ahead of plan. The initiative is designed to make HSBC simple and more agile with an immaterial revenue impact. Cost efficiency is one of the key benefits, clearer accountability and greater collaboration are others. The saves will be taken straight to the bottom line.

We have reviewed our portfolio against our strategic priorities and are moving at pace to exit non-strategic or low-returning activities. This initiative is expected to release $1.5bn of incremental investment capacity, which we are actively reallocating to areas of competitive strength where we can generate accretive returns. In 2025, we announced 11 exits, of which three have fully completed. These are in addition to the two transactions we announced in 2024.

Taken together, the completed and announced exits will generate $0.7bn in annualised cost savings and exits in active execution, including activities under strategic review, are expected to generate a further $0.6bn.

Following the privatisation of Hang Seng Bank, reported cost synergies across HSBC and Hang Seng Bank will release $0.3bn, which we will direct towards growth opportunities in Hong Kong. To reflect this, we are increasing our medium-term cost reallocation commitment from $1.5bn to $1.8bn.

Our $13.7bn privatisation of Hang Seng Bank brings together 255 years of history and heritage, combining global reach and local depth. It allows us to scale capabilities across both banks for all customers. Hong Kong is a dynamic economy, a top three global financial centre and a thriving trade gateway. It is a super-connector between mainland China and the world. It is also poised to become the world's leading cross-border wealth hub by 2029. The privatisation of Hang Seng Bank reflects our confidence and conviction in Hong Kong's future growth.

In our home markets, we are expanding the number of Wealth Centres and enhancing our wealth capabilities. In Hong Kong we opened five new state-of-the-art Wealth Centres. They provide a space where our Private Banking and Premier customers can meet our wealth specialists to plan, invest and manage their long-term financial future. In the UK, our flagship Wealth Centre launched in Mayfair, London, and we opened a second in Leeds, a major regional wealth hub.

Also in the UK, investment in our Business Banking coverage model is generating results. We are growing customer numbers, lowering attrition rates and seeing greater advocacy.

In IWPB we opened a further 20 new Wealth Centres focusing on Asia and the Middle East, excluding those in markets under strategic review. These are in many of the world's fastest-growing wealth economies, such as mainland China, Singapore and the UAE. We became the world's first global asset manager to establish an onshore platform in the UAE, offering retail and institutional investors access to 10 new funds. We refreshed our Premier proposition for affluent customers in four markets and it is now live in seven.

In CIB, we are using digital innovation to serve customers faster. Our tokenised deposits now offer next-generation real time payments across our network. They are available in Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and Luxembourg. Other markets will follow in 2026. With mobile-first consumers changing customer payment choices, we are changing digital wallet collection capabilities. Our Digital Merchant Services solution allows omnichannel payments, making e-commerce easier and more efficient for retailers. It is currently available in Hong Kong, India and Singapore, with six more markets launching in 2026.

We are also reengineering HSBC while focusing on resilience and risk management. We are modernising the bank through AI and automation to enhance customer experience, increase productivity and boost efficiency. We have more than 100 GenAI active use cases and are increasing AI partnerships to accelerate adoption of cutting-edge technologies. More than 31,000 of our engineers now use an AI-enabled coding assistant and our HSBC Productivity Suite tool is available to around 85% of our colleagues to help summarise, analyse and translate documents.

A clear strategy sets our direction. A strong culture is what turns it into results. This is why we are investing to build a high-performance culture. First, we refreshed our ambition: 'To be the most trusted bank globally, putting customers at the heart of everything we do'.

Second, we launched six new Leadership Principles and How We Lead, our new Group-wide leadership framework. All our senior leaders, and the broader Managing Director cohort, have now attended a two-day How We Lead event and 86% surveyed believe it is creating a positive cultural change. In 2026, we will roll it out to our broader people leaders globally. In the spirit of our Leadership Principle that 'great leaders build better leaders', more than 150 of our senior leaders will facilitate a How We Lead event in 2026.

I would like to thank Sir Mark Tucker for his exceptional leadership over the last eight years and congratulate Brendan Nelson on his appointment as Group Chairman. I look forward to continue working with Brendan as we pursue our clear agenda to unlock HSBC's full potential.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all my colleagues for their many valuable contributions to our results. It is a privilege to work with such talented people. Their dedication, commitment and passion to deliver for our customers truly differentiates HSBC and is key to delivering sustainable long-term growth for you, our shareholders.

Group CEO

25 February 2026