HSBC creates Global Head of Personal Financial Services and Marketing

Alex Hungate has been appointed to the new role of Head of Personal Financial Services and Marketing for HSBC globally with effect from September 2007.

Alex will lead a business that serves over 120 million customers worldwide. He will also take responsibility for overseeing the Group’s advertising, sponsorship and customer marketing activities. Regional leaders of Personal Finance and the principal heads of marketing will have a functional reporting line to Alex in addition to geographic reporting to local chief executives. This provides for local management and the global oversight necessary to achieve HSBC’s ambitions to fully connect its businesses and customers around the world.

Alex joins from Reuters where he was Managing Director, Asia. He led the company’s successful expansion in the region, growing market share and improving profitability and customer satisfaction. Previously, as Chief Marketing Officer, he implemented customer satisfaction measurement as a tool to drive service improvements and increase customer loyalty.

At HSBC, he will be based in London, reporting to HSBC’s Group Chief Executive, Michael Geoghegan. As a Group Managing Director he will also become a member of the 10-strong global Group Management Board.

Alex Hungate said: “I want to help HSBC grow by maintaining a relentless focus on the needs of its customers. In this role, with its combination of global leadership of the Personal Financial Services business plus the marketing function, I want to ensure that our services always deliver on the powerful promise of the HSBC brand.”

Alex’s top priority for HSBC’s global Personal Financial Services business will be to connect the bank’s operations around the world. As such, he is charged with selecting the best products, services and technologies from HSBC’s unparalleled 83-market network and implementing them around the world while also driving the creation of new services.

As the leader of HSBC’s marketing function, Alex will take charge of what is already the 23rd most valuable brand in the world and ensure that all advertising, sponsorship and customer marketing activity around the world complies with the bank’s brand values.

Alex was educated at Oxford University and Harvard Business School.