Annabel Spring

Spear’s Review  

‘At its heart, this is a business that’s about trusted relationships between people,’ says HSBC’s global private banking head Annabel Spring. ‘That’s absolutely our focus. It’s understanding deeply individual client situations – every family, every business, every entrepreneur is a little bit different. I always think when you’re talking to someone, “What do they need?”’

Marrying that personal touch with the reach of HSBC is something Spring has aimed to do since she was appointed CEO of the firm’s Global Private Banking arm in 2020. ‘Increasingly, people are looking to create a positive change in the world,’ she says. ‘And they’re really thinking through purpose, and whether it’s ESG, or whether it’s philanthropy, whether it’s the legacy of their name, and of their family, that’s really important.’

Spring started out with an economics degree at the University of Sydney, but later studied law and took the bar exam. ‘I had this moment of realisation that, actually, what barristers do – they sit in rooms by themselves for long periods of time. And then they come out and argue with people.’ Banking was the result of her thinking to herself: ‘Wait a sec, this is not what I want – what am I actually interested in?’

She jokes that her next decision after our talk will be to decide with her daughter ‘what on earth she wants to do this weekend’.