Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee

Hello, good morning, everyone. I'm Jose Carvalho. I head up the retail bank for HSBC UK. Good morning to you all.

Good morning, bore da. We're very grateful to you for making the time to be with us this morning. If it's all right, we'll go straight into questions. Could you expand, please, Jose, on why HSBC has come to this decision and how that decision was made?

Yes. Firstly, I just wanted to acknowledge that this has created unrest, and I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and explain a little bit more why we took this decision. It's mainly for an operational reason. We have a line that is significantly underutilised for the Welsh language service. We get about 22 calls a day. This line is operated by three colleagues at HSBC, so, between them, they are getting about seven calls a day. I must say, we have peaks and troughs in our telephony lines. It's very common, so they may get three or four calls in the morning and stay for two or three hours without any calls coming in, and get a few more calls in the evening when we see the peaks of demand. And that creates a real challenge for us to be able to sustain a service with that level of demand.

We have two options. We either can keep these three individuals sitting for most of the day not actually doing much, with which is quite difficult to retain colleagues, as they're looking for a job in serving clients rather than sitting in front of a screen. Or what we have done, which is to get them to really do a double act in supporting this line and supporting the English lines as well. But that creates a real problem on matching their availability. They may be in a call when a Welsh call comes in, and we end up with only 6 per cent of the calls that are coming in being answered in Welsh by these three agents. So, it's not a fantastic service for clients and for Welsh clients as well. So, it is a really difficult situation, but we took a good, measured decision throughout the last few months to get to that conclusion.

Thank you for that. Just to check, those three colleagues of yours who answer the Welsh lines, is that the only thing that they do?

So, they also now answer calls in English because it was unsustainable for them to be doing nothing for most of the day. You know, these colleagues have their own ambitions when they come into HSBC, and so they're doing two things. But then matching the timing of a call coming in with their availability—they may be taking another call—is our challenge.

I have some words here that are taken from HSBC's mission statement, which is on your website. In the section 'Our values in detail', it says, and I'm quoting HSBC here,

'We value difference. We were born speaking different languages. We were founded on the strength of different experiences, attributes and voices; they are integral to who we are and how we work.

'The greater our empathy and diversity, the better we reflect the worlds of our customers and communities—and the better we can serve them.'

Now, this decision to close the Welsh language line, that goes against your values, doesn't it?

We are providing an alternate service, so we're not completely demising this service. The alternate service is a call-back service, and what is good about that call-back service is, first, we can guarantee that all calls will be actually spoken in Welsh, which is not happening today on the Welsh line. We also have 48 colleagues who are operating across our 33 branches across Wales who are actually going to take now that service. So, we'll go from three to 48 colleagues who are going to be calling back our customers. So, we think that is going to, at the end of the day, lead to more calls actually being serviced in Welsh than actually what we have today.

There are Members who want to come in on this point. I'll go to Tom first and then I'll go to Alun. So, Tom.

Can I just come back to you very quickly on what you mentioned there about the deployment of the staff? You mentioned there were three staff accepting 22 phone calls, and, basically, until recently, that was all they did, other than perhaps on occasion take English language calls. I understand, in correspondence that the bank has had with a colleague of mine, Sam Kurtz, he was led to understand that those call handlers who were dealing with calls in the Welsh language were also performing other roles in local branches in Wales. Can you clarify whether that is the case or whether that's untrue?

Yes, they do answer queries in English as well, and that was my point—that it is unsustainable for them to be idle for most part of the day. So, we were trying to give them a full-time job where they can learn and serve clients. So, we have been putting them to do other activities, generally on English calls and serving English speaking customers.

But also doing other roles within branches already, is that right?

The three colleagues today—

Yes.

—most of what they do—. And they may operate from a location at the branch, but what they do is telephony, which is what is going to happen in the future as well. So, we will have our colleague staff in 17 of the branches in Wales. They will actually provide the services from the location of the branches—the call-back service from there, which is a normal set-up that we have at the bank.

I understand that. But when you say that the only thing they do is answer these calls, that's not quite the case, is it?

They're serving clients in all languages, in all kinds of support. But they are front-line colleagues serving clients on phone lines.

Alun Davies.

I was interested in your answer to Delyth's question, because, I should say, I am a customer of HSBC. I have a premier account with you, and one of the things I've noticed—. I'd been a customer of Midland Bank before that, for probably most of the last 30 years, and I've seen your service diminish and decline to me as a customer through that time. And certainly, my contact with HSBC in the last few years has been quite unsatisfactory. I don't want to come here to use the committee's time to go through all of my issues, but it seems to me that HSBC is diminishing in its service to customers.

Last year, was a very difficult year, coming out of COVID, specifically, in terms of recruitment of front-line colleagues. We had—I completely agree with you—an unacceptable level of service on our phone lines. We've recovered from the beginning of this year, from January. In fact, we utilise an average speed of answer as our main metric there. We've been green, which means we're answering phones in under 60 seconds on average to customers, which is our target. And we've been now putting a lot of effort in the quality of the service. So, first, are those basic needs, of course: picking up the phone and answering the basic queries. But we have another metric, which we call the net promoter score. We've increased about 20 points in the NPS this year in our service line. So, we're making progress. I do recognise your dissatisfaction, and, I think, it's correct—we started the year in not a fantastic position.

My comments refer to a lot before the pandemic. It's been bad since the pandemic, but it wasn't good beforehand. And I'm not just talking about the time taken to answer a call; I'm talking about the service you get when you do answer the call. I think it's quite poor. But the fundamental point that the Chair asked goes beyond this, doesn't it? It goes to who you are as a bank and who you are as an organisation. It seems to me that I can't walk through an airport anywhere, certainly in Europe and the United States, possibly, or the middle east, where I'm not confronted with HSBC adverts with lots of very attractive photographs telling me that you are the world's local bank, and, certainly, when I've worked in both the US and in the middle east, that's been quite useful for me, for lots of different reasons, but it just feels that the advertising tells a story, but you don't deliver on the promise you make to people.

Well, just a couple of facts. About half of our customers who we on board into the bank today are what we call international customers, meaning that they have multiple relationships, or they have a need for multiple relationships, across countries. So, it is a big part of what we do. About a third of our customer base in the UK have both local needs within the UK, but also have international needs beyond the UK. So, I do appreciate that that is your view, but our customers are coming to us with those needs, and we've been fulfilling that for the vast majority of them.

But you're not doing it for me, and you're not doing it for others who speak the Welsh language. And this goes beyond simply a telephone line, doesn't it, because most of my banking, as I would guess most people's banking experience is, is using the app—you know, on the telephone. Now, why isn't that available in Welsh?

So, we have—. You're correct; about 97 per cent of our transactions today are done digitally, either in the app or on internet banking. It's not as simple as translating the app; most of the screens that you see and most of the services behind an app and internet banking come from different parts and different systems across the bank. So, it's the infrastructure to allow us to actually have multiple languages, to maintain that and make sure that that is all consistent through those journeys. So, at the moment, we have no plans to create the capability for multilanguage within the UK infrastructure. It would be quite a significant investment and change in the technology set-up for us.

So, your app is only available in English—

Yes, in the UK.

—across the world.

In the UK.

But it's available in other languages in other parts of the world.

It is. But infrastructure in the UK—. A lot of the systems, the core systems and the processing systems, in the UK are UK-specific and they are not run on a global basis.

[Inaudible.]—available in?

Sorry. Could you repeat that?

How many languages is the app available in?

In the countries we operate, in some countries we have it in English and, in some countries, we'll have it in the local language. I don't have the exact facts. But the point is that the UK infrastructure, technology infrastructure, is not common; even between Hong Kong and the UK, there are two different technology infrastructures. So, changes in the UK or in the Hong Kong infrastructure have no impact in any other country.

I'm not convinced by your argument that it's not possible to provide an app in Welsh or any other language; you do provide it in other languages elsewhere. And I'm old enough, I'm sorry, Jose, to remember when a predecessor of yours told us that it was impossible for cashpoint machines to operate bilingually and that it was completely beyond any technological innovation. Unfortunately—. I don't spend the whole of my time in the United Kingdom, I do travel elsewhere and I see other operations. So, what was true 20 or 30 years ago, when you translated your cashpoints into the Welsh language, I guess is true about the app today: the reason that you haven't investigated, even, translating the app is because, frankly, your advertising says one thing but HSBC does another.

Just clarifying, I didn't say that it was impossible to translate the app; I said it is quite a significant task and quite a significant investment and, at this point in time, we have no plans to make the translation. Everything is, of course, possible; as you rightly point out, we do have apps in other languages in other countries.

[Inaudible.]—you say everything is possible, but would it be possible to continue offering the Welsh-language telephone line, then?

So, the alternate service, which we think is going to yield more calls being answered—. I'll just repeat: today, on the Welsh line, only 6 per cent of the calls are actually answered in Welsh. Now, we're going to guarantee that every single call on the call-back service is going to be spoken in Welsh. So, there will be more calls being answered in the Welsh language call-back service than there are today.

I think Llyr wants to come in on this.

If I may ask, if only 6 per cent of calls to the Welsh line were dealt with through the medium of Welsh, then surely you never really had a Welsh line.

It is the challenge in staffing a line that has only 22 calls a day, and seven calls per the individual that is operating that line. That is the case. It's an unsustainable service, just because of the low levels of demand that we see on it.

It's not unsustainable. It's your business decision to make it unsustainable. It could be sustained if there was a desire within your company to do that.

We think we have alternatives. So, we have 33 branches where we have translation services, and, in many of those branches, actually, the majority of those branches, we can serve fully in Welsh. And now we're creating on top of that the call-back service that is going to be handled by 48 colleagues in Wales that speak Welsh, of course. So, this is the response to a line that we think is suboptimal and a service that we think is suboptimal today.

Could I ask how you've been promoting the Welsh language line in the past? Because I have a HSBC bank card, there are phone numbers on that; the Welsh language line number isn't on that. I have the HSBC app; I can go and see a list of phone numbers where I could contact the bank if needs be. The Welsh language line number isn't there either. So, why would you expect people to know about the existence of this line and why do you regret that so few use it if you're not making more of an effort to promote that line?

So, we have different places where we make available the number and the service: our website clearly states that this is a service that is available, and it is a public website. In all of our branches, we will have that service advertised inside the branch. We also have, for customers that declare, of course, that they are Welsh speakers and that's their preferred language, in all of our statements, that is also advertised in there. On the back of the plastic card, it's a bigger challenge, because these are issued centrally globally, so it's hard to change that, as it's the base format of the plastic, so, it's again an operational challenge for us, but we do have quite a few places where we have been making this public.

As a Welsh speaker, if I want to deal with you through the medium of Welsh, you can give me an assurance that someone will call back within three days and they'll be a Welsh speaker and will deal with my query. Now, during those three days, what if the issue that I wanted to discuss with you hadn't been dealt with within those three days while I was waiting for that call back, and there was some penalty on my account because I hadn't done something or hadn't responded in a timely manner because I was waiting for that call back? Can you give us an assurance in that scenario that people won't be penalised and that you would repay any penalty arising because of that three-day delay?

So, there are specific services that we provide today and we will continue to provide going forward; not all services that the bank provides today are done in Welsh. So, I'll just give you an example: if you want to renegotiate a debt or you want to inform us of bereavement et cetera, these are dealt with by specialist teams inside the bank, and today they're all done in English and they will continue to be done in English. So, we're not using this line—. Fraud is probably another good example. In the current environment in the UK, where fraud is quite fierce, we do recommend that customers call us immediately rather than waiting three days, because that should protect customers. So, we're being very clear to customers in terms of what is possible and what is done today and will be done in the future in Welsh and what are the services that will need to be dealt with within our set-up in the English language.

So, you can't give me that assurance?

No, I can't give you that assurance, because the service we provide today is no different than what we're going to do in the future, and not every single service today is done in Welsh.

Now, how many times will the callback be tried if I don't reply in the first instance?

I will need to get back to you. I'll get back to you in writing on that; I don't have that information to hand.

What I want—

I will make sure that this is not a one-time call back, if we don't get you. I recognise that a lot of people will be busy working and may not be able to answer.

Yes, well, that's—

I will give you a precise answer offline.

That's the assurance I'm looking for: if I miss that call, that I'm not then expected to have to call back again, because, more often than not, I'm sure people do miss those calls.

Okay. Now, you say that there is a personal call back. And you've also said in correspondence that there are alternative means of dealing with the bank for people who can't use the Welsh language line from here on in. Now, will those alternative methods be available through the medium of Welsh?

In terms of which services specifically? Can you just clarify to me, just to situate myself?

I'm just looking for that letter now. Give me a moment. I will find it. But the correspondence does state that you will ensure that there are alternative means of people dealing with you, particularly vulnerable people who need services through the medium of Welsh, so I just wanted you to expand on that.

Yes. So, correct, there are other ways for customers to interact with us, actually, and growing as we speak. Of course, we have the 33 branches, but also, for day-to-day transactions, we have the post office, where customers can still do quite a few queries of a transactional nature, of course. We've been participating in the Cash Access UK group; we're a member and of course a sponsor of it. We're going to be opening next year about 100 of the cash service hubs across the UK; I don't have the exact figures for Wales, but I can also speak to the cash UK team to see how many are going to be opened in Wales. So, there's a range of options that are growing in size and numbers for alternative methods in there.

Right.

Sorry, I didn't address your vulnerable—. if I may, for one minute, on the vulnerable, because I think it's a very important one, especially in light of consumer duty, a new regulation for banks. We have about 85 vulnerable customers in our base of customers that require special care in Wales. From next week, we're going to be calling each one of them in advance of the service changing in January, understanding if they are comfortable with alternative methods, and we see, even in our vulnerable population, some that are comfortable in using, for example, a tablet. We provide a free tablet for internet banking for our vulnerable customers. Sometimes, they are very comfortable in using that, so we'll see if they're already set up; if not, we're going to be going and setting that up for them and see if they need any alternative arrangements. So, we're very focused on the 85 people that we identified as vulnerable.

Okay, thank you. In the original correspondence we received dated 8 November, informing us that the line was being closed, your colleague from HSBC said that you have confirmed that all customers are able to bank in English. How did you confirm that, or how did you verify that?

We have about 1,700 customers that have used the line regularly or sporadically over the last few years, and, in most of those cases, because only 6 per cent of the calls are answered in Welsh, they end up being answered in English. We have been measuring how many of them have been serviced in English. So, again, there are hard stats in terms of our call centre operations that lead to that response.

So, that reference was in relation to those using the line, not all customers, as is stated in the letter. Because, obviously, there will be people out there who, for various reasons—maybe health or age or whatever—are struggling actually to access services through the medium of English.

Yes. We have over 600,000 customers in Wales. We're not saying that we understand if all the 600,000 are bilingual—that would be an impossible task for us to identify here. But for the regular users of the line, who are the ones that are going to be impacted by the alternative and the change here, we are confident that they are bilingual.

I'm going to bring Tom in in a moment. Tom has been very patient with us. But I'd like to put this to you, Jose: from what you've just been saying about your decision that was referred to in that letter—that you have determined that all of these customers can bank in English—that seems to have been a decision or a consideration that you've come to by stealth, by the fact that because they have been denied the service in Welsh for so long and that they have then put up with having that service in English instead, that means—. There may be great reluctance; there may be some customers who could have found it an almost traumatic experience, actually, to have had that conversation about something they find very sensitive in English, when they've been used to doing it in Welsh. So, that wasn't a consideration that was thinking about the emotional effect on the customers, was it?

It's just a statement of fact that we identified that they can speak in English. I think your point on whether they're happy to speak in English is a completely different point, and I absolutely take that—that many will not be happy. Therefore, I think the creation of the alternative line—. We're not saying that we're not actually going to call and have conversations on the telephone in Welsh. My hope, as we launch the line at the beginning of the new year, is that we can really come back with data to substantiate that we're having more conversations in Welsh than we were having with the previous service. And I'm very happy to bring some of the stats to this committee as and when we're fully operational and have some initial data.

Thank you. You've mentioned the 22 calls a day figure—. Can you hear me? You've mentioned the—. Can you hear me now?

I can hear you now.

You've mentioned the 22 calls a day figure on a number of occasions. Obviously, that does equate to 8,000 calls a year, roughly—it depends how you use these statistics. But how does that figure compare with peak levels of usage? Is that 22 a peak, or have there been years where that figure has been higher?

This is our latest in the last 12 months. I don't have the data from previous years, but it's the latest sustainable on the last 12 months. So, again, it's something I can come back to offline, with the previous years, bearing in mind that, of course, during the last three or four years, we had the COVID impact there, so, there will be—. But I can come back offline with that trend.

So, it doesn't sound like it's a decision that's been taken as a result of a decline in usage, if you don't know the previous figure offhand.

No, I just don't have it to hand. We know there has been a decline in the service and, actually, what's important here is the sustainability of the current position, which is 22 calls a day. We take almost 20,000 calls a day as a bank and, on average, a call centre operator will actually take about 30 to 40 calls a day, versus about seven calls a day on this line. So, it's quite a different statistic from the rest of our operational set-up.

You've called it a number of times an alternative arrangement, if you like, rather than a decline in service, which, let's be blunt, is what it is for Welsh speakers in Wales. Did you consider other alternatives and, if so, what were they?

I'll repeat myself a little bit, but we do have other alternatives: the 33 branches, we have the Post Office, we are increasing our Cash Access UK network. There are huge aspirations in terms of how many of those hubs we're going to open across the UK. As I said, 100 hubs are planned already for 2024, but it could get to 500, 600, 700 branches over the next three to five years. This is of course a multibank set-up, but I think it's a very important part of the future of high-street banking in the UK.

Do you wait three days to speak to your bank?

Say that again, sorry.

Do you wait three days to speak to your bank?

It depends on the service. If I'm going to do mortgage advice, wealth advice, yes, you could be waiting three days. What I would say on this line is we need to come out with something that we think is not going to create a bad outcome for customers. I do think that, with 48 of our colleagues supporting a line with the demand that we've seen, we're actually going to be able to really do the job in a much, much faster way, but we do not want to come out with a new service promising that we're going to come back on the same day, for example, with a callback, and end up underdelivering. But I'm pretty confident that we're actually going to beat quite significantly the three-day service level that we've put in the letter.

And in terms of this three-day service, is HSBC open—? Obviously, I assume there'll be some sort of assessment as that goes along. Is HSBC open, then, to reversing the decision if that service turns out, perhaps, even to be less popular than that 22-call current Welsh language provision?

It will be absolutely important for us to review the customer outcomes on this line. We have a duty under the consumer duty to do that and to make sure that customer outcomes are correct on that line. We'll probably need to go through the first quarter just to get enough readings in terms of customer sentiment et cetera, but a review in the second quarter of next year, I think, is absolutely necessary to see where we stand with that new service.

And finally, would you be happy to share the outcome of that review, where appropriate, with us?

Absolutely, I'd be very happy to share where we are.

Thank you for that. And just to clarify, please, Jose, the 18,000 figure that you have noted for the English language line that you were comparing the Welsh language line with, that 18,000 figure, is that for Wales only or all of the UK, please?

That's the UK call centre. I think the more important figure is the 32 calls a day on average per colleague. That is the one that you can compare. Of course, we have more customers speaking English than Welsh on our lines in the UK for obvious reasons. So, the 18,000 is not necessarily a figure—. But that translates into 30 to 40 calls a day per agent in our telephony centres.

Thank you for clarifying that. Carolyn, you wanted to come in on something.

Good morning. Just to go over some of the questions that have been raised, you said that there are 1,700 regular users of the service, 85 of whom are vulnerable, who will be contacted, but how will you be promoting that people will be getting a callback if they request it? Three days is a long time, and you can't expect people to be sitting by the phone. They might think that they have to. For this service to be grown and promoted, how are you going to do it? I heard you say that there would be posters up in the branch, but people don't always take notice of that.

There aren't many branches left.

Yes, a lot of branches have been closing. We've heard a lot in the news that the Welsh language service will not be offered, but we've not heard of the service that will be offered. So, I just wanted to know how you'll be promoting that. And then I have another question as well, Chair, if that's okay, when that's been answered.

In the first instance, of course, we've written to the regular users, which is not responding—. I recognise exactly your question, so I'll get there. But we have written and we intend to write again to those customers as we get closer to the date. And on top of that, of course, we're going to be calling, from next week, the 85 vulnerable customers. We're updating the signage in our branches so that we make sure that in the branches people know that it's available. Of course, we are updating, when the service goes live, our website, which is the main destination for customers to get that information from us. What I can take away from these conversations is to find a way, if there's anything else we could do in terms of potentially going to the media and announcing this in the new year in a broader range, or writing to a wider range of audiences. So, I will take that back to my team to see what the art of the possible is there.

[Inaudible.]—and that if they don't answer the call that first time, that they will get a call again, that would be appreciated, as well. And can I just ask you—? In other countries where there are minority languages, what provisions do the bank offer?

I wouldn't be able to tell you that. I manage just the UK business. I don't have that information to hand. But, again, it's something I can come back to you with.

[Inaudible.]—so we can compare. Thank you.

Thank you. Diolch, Carolyn. Before I bring in Hefin David, Jose, we really do appreciate the fact that you've given us the time this morning, and into this afternoon now, but a lot of the answers that you're giving do seem to be focusing on the business needs and from the point of view of HSBC internally, but not, perhaps, on the needs of customers. Demographically, a lot of the people who would be using this line, I'm guessing, would be older people, they would be people who could be, as some of the other Members have already pointed out, more vulnerable, they could be in a situation where talking to the bank, to them, might be something that could be quite frightening, and if they're called back and they miss that call and then a callback is made again, and again they miss that call, you could get into a loop where they never end up speaking to the bank. The needs of customers haven't been at the heart of this decision, have they?

First, they certainly have, because we have an obligation under consumer duty on any decisions to run through our consumer duty process, and the Financial Conduct Authority will have a right—. We actually informed the FCA before we announced this change, so they have the right to come and challenge us if they don't see the customer outcomes on that.

[Inaudible.]—and I understand that, again, from an operational point of view and whether you are in keeping with the letter of what's expected of you, I know that that is certainly one consideration, but in terms of, again, that mission statement that you have that

'The greater our empathy and diversity, the better we reflect the worlds of our customers and communities',

the world of these Welsh-speaking customers is in Welsh. Their world is entirely in Welsh. And so you're not going alongside that mission statement, are you?

Again, we do have an alternative service in Welsh, and we agreed that I'm going to come back in the second quarter with some statistics on how that new service is doing. Because we could see, actually, an increasing number of customers that are being served in Welsh, certainly with 48 of our colleagues now supporting that. So, I would rather wait until we have the facts and figures there to declare if this is us stepping back or actually moving forward.

Thank you for that. I'll go to Llyr and then to Hefin.

Two statistics have been highlighted this morning. One is the fact that there are 22 people on average using the Welsh language line on a daily basis. You've also said that only 6 per cent of those calls to the Welsh language line are dealt with through the medium of Welsh. That means that that's one call a day that you're dealing with through the medium of Welsh on your Welsh language phone line. So, why are you surprised that Welsh speakers are turning their backs on that Welsh language line?

It is unsustainable, and at the heart of the decision here is an unsustainable service at the moment that is not yielding the outcomes that we want. That is the very reason why we think the alternative service will yield more calls being dealt with in Welsh, as we promised, or all calls—not more calls—because we will make sure that we can guarantee in that way that all calls will be dealt with in Welsh. That is the heart of the decision. It's not a service that is sustainable at the moment.

Okay. Thank you for that. We'll turn to Alun for a brief question and then to Hefin.

No, go to Hefin.

We'll go to Hefin first, actually. We'll go to Hefin first.

Thank you, Chair. Could I ask whether there are any implications for the staff serving the Welsh language line at the moment from this decision?

No. They will move into our normal call centre operations line. We have a service centre in Wales for our UK call centre, where we have about 100 colleagues working in south Wales, so they will simply move into that operation.

Are there any redeployment or relocation issues?

No, and as I say, we're quite flexible in colleagues working from our branch locations or from our hubs. We have many across the UK, and again call centres, we have in Wales, in Scotland and in England, so colleagues can choose where to be redeployed.

Did you consult with them? Did you consult with those staff?

Yes, absolutely—absolutely.

What were their views?

They are already operating, again, our English lines for the vast majority of their days, so this is just a continuation of the work that they're already doing today.

Did they express concerns?

No. We also consulted quite significantly with our network, or what we call our distribution teams that look after our branch network, et cetera, because they are going to be now providing—. Those 48 colleagues are going to be providing the service. So, this has been a very wide consultation within our Wales contingency of colleagues to be able to actually put that service together, going forward.

So, to be clear, staff didn't express concerns about these changes.

No. The three colleague members not, and actually we do think that the new service is going to yield more calls in Welsh than before, so that's why we decided to proceed with the project, with the alternative service.

Do you know how many Welsh-speaking staff you've got?

Not entirely in the whole organisation, because they may be working in other parts of the UK, or actually globally—we are a global organisation. I don't have that statistic. I'm not privy to the personal information for all our colleagues across the world.

Do you think it would be helpful—certainly for those based in Wales—to understand that, though, in order to perhaps look at how you could map your staffing skills with customer needs?

Yes. So, we have 48 colleagues, that's for sure, in Wales, working in our branches. We have 48 colleagues who are Welsh speakers. From that part of the company, we know very well who they are, because they will be the ones providing the future service here. I thought your question was broader than that, in terms of other parts of the UK, of course, doing other jobs independently of serving customers. We will have, without a doubt, many, many other colleagues that are Welsh or are bilingual, without a doubt.

Okay. Thank you.

Diolch. Alun, did you want to come in?

I think the problem you've had this morning in this conversation is that you're telling us what you're doing to deliver for your customers and how you're trying to improve those services, but we are your customers, a lot of us in this room. And what you're saying to us this morning doesn't reflect our experience of being your customers. My experience of HSBC has been a diminution in service and quality over, certainly, the last decade or so that I've seen, and the services that you're delivering to me and my family are less good today than they were some years ago. And that's been a constant, and it's not simply the pandemic affecting that.

We've also seen significant technological changes. So, the argument that you put forward that it's simply impossible to translate the app, frankly, doesn't stand examination when you look at how many other companies are working. I can work my iPhone in Welsh, but I can't use your app in Welsh. The argument that the technology doesn't exist, or you're unable to use the technology, frankly, doesn't reflect my life. It doesn't reflect the life I lead. And I speak English and Welsh, and I go between the two, and you are not delivering a service for me and my family in the way that your advertising tells others that you're doing. So, the next time I walk along an air bridge and see all those adverts telling me that you are the world's local bank, I won't believe it. And you will know, from your own background, that the worst thing you can do in marketing is to let down your customers, not deliver the quality and standard of service that you tell them you are seeking to deliver on their behalf. And that is something that I think HSBC is increasingly guilty of doing.

And, finally, my final point is: telling us we can have a call back in three days is inadequate. It's simply inadequate. That's not how we live our lives. My relationship, quite often, with my daughter is she phones me in the morning and she wants cash by the afternoon. I can do that through the app. Telling me that I've got to wait three days to speak my language in my country, frankly, isn't the service that is going to be used, or that I would tolerate myself. My constituents expect better than that.

So, just reiterating, I did not say that it's an impossible task to translate an app; what I'm saying is it's not an easy job to translate an app, because what you see on your app is just the front-end connection of many, many different core systems across the bank. So, it's not impossible by any means, but it is a significant uplift on our infrastructure, in our technology infrastructure.

We'll agree it's not impossible, but what that indicates to me is that you would be prepared to do a piece of scoping work to look at how you would do that.

We have a technology framework and investment plan. As you would expect, we have many, many priorities within the bank—some regulatory changes, some commercial changes, some operational changes that we need to make. And, at this point in time, we have not scoped or prioritised having the ability to have multiple languages in our systems. I'm not saying that this is something that we'll never do, but I'm just being transparent that, at this point of time, we don't have that in our road map.

But as a Welsh speaker, what I'm hearing from that is that I am not a priority of yours, that I am very much down the bottom of the list—so far, actually, that I'm not even on the list, currently. How do you think that statement makes me feel as a Welsh speaker?

There are many, many services we provide as a bank, and from our clients' engagements with us in Wales—now reminding that we have 600,000 customers in Wales—we are providing services, providing a mortgage, providing a savings account, getting them on the property ladder, providing a wealth investment solution, a retirement solution. We have many, many services that we can fulfil for our customers, and we have evidence that we have many customers that are very happy to engage with us in that way.

Well, I fear you may have a former customer who's very unhappy here as well.

I acknowledge that.

Okay. Could you tell us, please, Jose, when you expect that those services, digitally, will be available in Welsh? Because of AI, that is developing that field very rapidly. Do you have a timescale for when the app will be available or could be available in Welsh?

No, I don't. As I mentioned, this is not something that is on our road map at this stage. So, it is not something that I can give you a date for.

Okay. Well—. Yes, Carolyn.

I just want to make the point that if somebody’s expecting a phone call any time over three days, they're not going to be carrying paperwork around with them for three days for them to refer to. So, that's an issue as well. So, in that moment in time when they need to speak to the bank, they might have to have the information there, and they're prepared. But if it could be any time over three days, that's massive. If it's over two days, it might be slightly better, and some banks are offering, I know, a call back if it's a detailed conversation over an account over two days. But three days, without a time, I don't think that's acceptable, really.

And the other thought is: if you do a media communication about this service, could you please also cover the fact that services can be offered via the post office, so that people know, especially in rural areas in Wales? Many people that live in rural areas of Wales are those Welsh speakers, and Welsh language is a first language as well, so may struggle in English, but they might have access to the post office. So, I just really thought, could you cover that when you promote? Thank you.

Definitely. As I said, we're going to write again to customers, so I'll take that point and make it very clear that there are quite a few transactional services available through the post office. I will also commit to come back on the call back and the retries and everything else. How will that operate, I think, if a very valid point and something that I'm pretty sure the team would have covered, I just don't have the information right now. But I'll take that back and come back offline to this committee.

Thank you for that, Jose. And you've mentioned there were a number of technical questions that we'd asked on certain statistical matters, like the specific number of calls from Wales on a daily basis and things like that. Would you be happy to write to the committee with that information, please? When we send you the transcript, we could prompt you on which those were.

I suppose, Jose, we know that you are the person who has been put forward to take the flak on this, and we do appreciate that, obviously, this isn't a decision that you have made personally and on your own, but I think the strength of feeling that's come from committee members this morning, and then into this afternoon, I'm sure that you'll see that that is heartfelt, representing constituents who are frightened about this decision. And I suppose I would just implore you, please, to go back to other senior people within HSBC and to quote their own words back to them that, again, HSBC's words,

'We were born speaking different languages.'

We were born speaking different languages in Wales, and we are still living speaking different languages, and we really need—. And people who are vulnerable in Wales and not just people who just want to make a point about speaking Welsh, but people who live their lives through the medium of Welsh cannot be expected to wait for three days in order to continue with their lives. I would implore you, please, to take that message back to your colleagues and, again, in your own words,

'The greater our empathy and diversity, the better we reflect the worlds of our customers and communities'.

Please do take that back to them.

I will. I will have a debrief with our CEO, Ian Stuart, after the call, but there are a few things here. I think it has been quite useful to have this conversation. I understand the level of angst in the room, but, actually, I think there are a few points here that we can take back, think on, and potentially even improve the situation as we go live in January. So, I do appreciate you taking the time as well to speak to me.

Thank you, and again we would implore the bank, please, to reverse the decision.

We will be sending a transcript to you of the call this morning to check that it's a fair record of the transcript. Diolch yn fawr iawn ichi. Thank you very much for being with us this morning and into this afternoon.

We're extremely grateful for your time. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Have a good rest of the day.

Thank you, you too.