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HSBC announces it is reinstating products

ended 09. June 2023

HSBC announced this an hour or so ago: “Our new business Residential and Buy to Let products have been reinstated for a limited time only. We will however notify you when these need to be removed from sale.” Meanwhile, Clydesdale have apparently pulled all products with 2 hrs notice, according to a Newspage broker. UK newswire, Newspage, asked brokers for their views.

10 responses from the Newspage community

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Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
This is a great outcome and response, however it is still creating a log jam online due to the rush for the mortgage products, and with no clear deadline of when they will be removed. This is no different to Thursday’s situation. Brokers will have told their customers that they could no longer get the products yesterday, possibly re-sourced and applied for a different product with another lender already. This is a complete waste of everyone's time and it really looks bad not only on HSBC but also how this comes across to our customers. How will we know when the product withdrawal is a 'true' product withdrawal?
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Rohit Kohli
Director at The Mortgage Stop
It's farcical. How are we expected to offer quality advice to clients that meets consumer duty responsibilities when lenders behave this way? The queue was 500 deep for me and over an hour wait. So by the time we have undertaken the correct due diligence and had the conversation with the client about the product, there is still no guarantee that we'll be able to secure the product for them. If ever there was a need for a regulator that truly had its priorities right and teeth to go along with it’s now.
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Riz Malik
Independent Financial Adviser at R3 Wealth
I would like to think HSBC has seen the momentum of the 24-hour mortgage pledge that the mortgage community is backing and realised the errors of their ways. However, I cannot recall a time a lender pulled products and then reinstated them within 24 hours. For the sake of consumers, lenders need to commit to giving 24 hours' notice of product withdrawals.
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Graham Cox
Director at Bridging Hub
HSBC's reinstating of their products for a limited time only is an acknowledgement of the fact that they didn't win any friends on Thursday when they pulled them with no notice. They were possibly also wary that they might have fallen foul of the new Consumer Duty rules.
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Aaron Strutt
Product and Communications Director at Trinity Financial
HSBC has been receiving a huge amount of mortgage applications mainly because it has been offering cheaper rates than many of its competitors. The market is in a really difficult position with the constant changes over the past two weeks. These funding pressures are putting lenders, brokers and borrowers in really awkward situations.
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Katy Eatenton
Mortgage & Protection Specialist at Eatenton Finance
This was a wonderful call to receive today. They reinstated products for brokers that couldn’t get on to submit applications yesterday due to the website crashing. However, the information wasn’t panelled out to everyone until this afternoon and I think once their funds have been utilised they will shut up shop again. Clydesdale have similar criteria to HSBC in accepting salary and profits for self-employed directors, so it’s no surprise that they would have been inundated today and therefore need to reprice too.
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Craig Fish
Director at Lodestone Mortgages
Quite frankly, for a lender as large as HSBC, their systems are appalling and antiquated. Every time they announce a rate pull, their system goes into meltdown. This has been the same for several years, and yet they still don't learn. To reinstate products today is simply them trying to garner some positive press following their debacle yesterday, but I fear this is going to backfire on them in a big way, as no doubt their systems will be overwhelmed again. HSBC, please do us all a favour and invest some of your profits into updating your capabilities.
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Jamie Lennox
Director at Dimora Mortgages
HSBC has popped back up with its tail between its legs. Yet again their system is not geared up for this with long placeholders before brokers can access their system. I'm sure there will be another batch of brokers who have the rug pulled from below their feet once HSBC decides they've reached their limit after spending their afternoon trying to access their system. After Thursday's disaster, it would have been much easier to take it as a learning curve and to ensure it wasn't repeated in the future. But this temporary return could result in misery for many.
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Ashley Thomas
Director at Magni Finance
Whilst it is good that they are reinstating products, it doesn't make up for all the brokers who spent a painful afternoon trying to submit cases. Where it normally takes up to an hour to complete the application, most brokers spent several hours with issues and not being able to submit their cases. This has happened with HSBC previously. If they gave suitable notice, namely the 24-hour pledge a lot of fellow brokers are requesting, their system would not be overwhelmed and would be able to function normally.
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Anil Mistry
Director and Mortgage Broker at RNR Mortgage Solutions
It is imperative for a lender to reinstate their products without necessitating a negative response from brokers. Regrettably, it seems that HSBC has succumbed to broker pressure and subsequently reintroduced its products. While this action is commendable, it is disheartening that they took external pressure to do so.

The recent abrupt withdrawal of products by Clydesdale serves as a poignant indicator of the prevailing circumstances. As brokers, we are compelled to proactively expedite application submissions, although this task proves to be more challenging in practice than in theory.