Legal Info
Household HSBC Watch is a watchdog and consumer advocacy organization.
We monitor customer trends for possible violations of Regulation Z and other possible illegal actions.
We use your individual HSBC complaints and merchant complaint reports to perform trend analysis.
We are not associated with HSBC, Household International, or their merchants.
Some items are used by permission granted in the Fair Use guidelines of the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act.
In a recent Household HSBC Watch article there is speculation that HSBC Finance Corporation - the former Household International - might be for sale as HSBC jettisons their bad debts and bad image. We invite comments relative to the idea and ask the big question - Who Would Buy It?
Related posts:
You must be logged in to post a comment.
© 2009 - Household HSBC Watch is proudly powered by people who care 
HSBC is also present in Brazil where it purchased Banco HSBC Bamerindus in 1997. The bank has been an active buyer in Latin America in the past years, acquiring Mexico’s fourth-largest bank in 2002 and a string of consumer finance companies in Brazil and the Argentine banking operation of Italy’s Banca Nazionale de Lavoro SpA for $155 million early last year.
With a string of consumer finance companies HSBC does not need HSBC Finance to further the “Household Model” in South America.
The London-based bank, which gets almost 40 percent of its pretax profit from Asia, is putting more emphasis on emerging markets to counter slower growth and rising consumer-loan defaults in the U.S. and U.K. HSBC’s Hong Kong unit generated a bigger pretax profit than its U.S. operations last year.
Free Online Tax Returns
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting
Tom Detelich preaches about “opening the lines of communication” with the employees and we have been sitting in branch offices for 2 months now watching the Federal Reserve lower rates while our product rates continue to increase. Kathy Madison, who has never worked in a branch environment is in charge of running the branch network….is there not one intelligent mind at our headquarters that can see the disconnect here. We get these rediculous “positive note of the month” messages from that ***** and at the most recent Division Optimization meeting she threatened mid to high level executives with losing their jobs if they communicated any branch closure plans with the employees. Merry Christmas…you all are fired is the attitude in the branches and it is damn near impossible to get any work done with the possibility of your job not being there lingering over your head each day you walk through the door. If they want to do the right thing, simply talk to the employees and let them know so they can start making plans…employees have families too…but I guess that doesn’t matter when your base salary is more than the sum of an entire branch payroll.
I was an employee of Beneficial when we were bought out by Household. I lasted 4 months. During that 4 months they raised their rates (when rates were low in the market and going lower), asked us to “refinance” personal loans from 21% to 36% for excellent payers, and held payoffs on real estate loans for several weeks, even into the next month. As a company, Beneficial did not do the things that were required of me once we were Household. My mom retired from Beneficial and I had 10 years before they were bought.
Of course, I was labeled a troublemaker and considered insubordinate when I was refusing to these things. Earlier, when we were Beneficial, my office had a perfect state and internal audit. The VP of our division was called and told that they had never seen such a clean, well run office. Things changed quickly once we were Household. Greed was the bottom line.
Needless to say, the stress was so high, I couldn’t stand it. I eventually called the internal auditor that had given our office rave reviews and he immediately took action. They released me 3 days later. As a whistleblower, I threatened to expose how they were violating laws by keeping payoffs into the following month when the borrower was to get another statment for payment. I received a small compensation, told to keep quiet, and it was understood they would never rehire me. (NO PROB)
When I heard of the predatory lending settlement, I smiled, but thought it should have been a much higher amount. Now, I am glad to have found this website and keep updated on all these offices that will be closing soon. They already closed my office years ago; about 1yr after I left. Go figure.
Everyone cries predatory lending from HSBC Finance. What the people don’t know is that this is what the whole industry is. I have worked for 4 different subprime companies and they are all the same. For the most part we truely help about 90% of our clients however, all you here about are the cusotmers who didn’t know what loan they signed for. We have to disclose everything (more than most companies) and an attorney goes over every line with them. Not that I agree with some of the practices that go on but shame on the cusotmer for not reading what they are signing.
Most customers just care about how much money they are getting so they can do home improvements or spend it else where.
Don’t just blame HSBC Finance, we are not putting guns to the customers heads.