Cookie policy

Understanding how and why we use cookies

We use cookies to give you the best possible experience on our website. Cookies allow you to do many things such as log on to Business Internet Banking and apply for products and services online.

When you visit this site, we ask for your consent to use cookies. To find out more about how we use them and what benefits they bring, please take a few moments to read this Cookie Policy.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are sent to and stored on your computer, smartphone or other device for accessing the internet, whenever you visit a website. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user's device.

At HSBC, we use cookies for a variety of reasons, such as to determine preferences, let users navigate between pages efficiently, verify the user and carry out other essential security checks. Some of the functions that cookies perform can also be achieved using similar technologies. This policy refers to 'cookies' throughout, however it also covers these alternate mechanisms.

More information about cookies can be found on allaboutcookies.org

How cookies make our website safer and easier to use

We use cookies to safeguard your privacy when you're browsing our website and use secure online application forms. If you leave a secure session window open when logged in to Business Internet Banking, we use cookies to enhance your security by prompting you to end (or automatically ending) your secure session.

Cookies can allow us to tailor the content of our website to suit your interests. For example, instead of displaying promotional messages about products you already have, they let us show you other services you may be interested in.

We use 'analytics' cookies to help us make our website better for those who visit it regularly. They help us work out what users like and don't like and how we can improve things for you.

When we include links to other websites, please bear in mind they will have their own privacy and cookie policies that will govern the use of any information you submit. We recommend you read their policies as HSBC is not responsible or liable for their privacy practices.

How we work with trusted third parties

Third parties are trusted suppliers to HSBC. They include our insurance policy providers, partners who provide important functionality to our website, such as our live chat service, and partners who help us improve our website, such as Webtrends, who provide statistics about which pages are visited most frequently.

We only use cookies from third parties in order to provide our customers with HSBC products and services. The only time cookies would enable us to share personal information such as your name, address, telephone or email is when you have given us express consent to pass it on to a trusted third party - for example, if you were applying for an insurance product from one of our third party insurance providers.

You will only ever be shown HSBC-branded advertisements on our website - never those from other companies. Of course, you may see HSBC-branded advertisements when browsing other companies' websites too. Some of these will be general campaign-related adverts but others will be tailored to your likely interests based upon previous web browsing activity - these can be easily identified as they feature a small blue AdChoices icon in the corner of the advert. If you want to opt-out of receiving targeted adverts from HSBC, please read our FAQs.

How you can manage your cookies

The browsers of most computers, smartphones and other web-enabled devices are typically set up to accept cookies. If you wish to amend your cookie preferences for this website or any other websites, you can do this through your browser settings. Your browser's 'help' function will tell you how to do this.

However, please remember that cookies are often used to enable and improve certain functions on our website. If you choose to switch certain cookies off, it is likely to affect how our website works. For example, if your browser is set to disable 'session' cookies, although you will still be able to view our public website, you won't be able to log on to Internet Banking.

More information about how to disable cookies can be found on allaboutcookies.org

How we improve our email

We use email analytics and reporting tools to see how many of our emails are opened and which links receive the most clicks. Knowing which articles and topics our customers like and which they don't like helps us improve our content and make our emails more relevant.

We maintain strict security standards and procedures to prevent unauthorised access to information about you. HSBC will never contact you by email or otherwise to ask you to validate personal information such as your user ID, password, or account numbers. If you receive such a request, please contact your Relationship Manager (if you have one) or contact our Business Telephone Banking team on 03457 60 60 60 or if you're outside the UK, it's +44 1226 260 878. Lines are open Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm and Saturday 8am to 2pm. If you need a Text Relay service, you can download the 'Relay UK' app and call our number from within it. For other accessible ways to contact us, please visit our Accessibility page.

If you wish to unsubscribe from marketing emails, please click on the link located in the footer of any marketing email you've received from us.

More about your privacy

To find out more about how HSBC protects your privacy when using our website, see our Website Terms and Privacy Statement.