HSBC PRIVACY STATEMENT

To preserve the confidentiality of all information you provide to us, we have adopted the following privacy principles:

1. We only collect information that we believe to be relevant and required to understand your financial needs and to conduct our business.

2. We use your information to provide you with better customer services and products.

3. We may pass your information to other HSBC Group companies or agents, as permitted by law.

4. We will not disclose your information to any external organisation unless we have your consent or are required by law or have previously informed you.

5. We may be required from time to time to disclose your information to Governmental or judicial bodies or agencies or our regulators, but we will only do so under proper authority.

6. We aim to keep your information up-to-date.

7. We maintain strict security systems designed to prevent unauthorised access to your information by anyone, including our staff.

8. All Group companies, all our staff and all third parties with permitted access to your information are specifically required to observe our confidentiality obligations.

COOKIES, WEB BEACONS AND SPOTLIGHT TAGS

Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer's hard disc for record keeping purposes.
Cookies can make the web more useful by storing information about your preferences on particular sites, thus enablingwebsite owners to provide more useful features for their users. They contain no name or address information or any information that will enable anyone to contact you via telephone, e-mail or any other means. Most browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you would prefer, you can set your browser to disable cookies or inform you when they are set.
Information on how to disable cookies can be obtained by referring to either your Operating Systems Manual or your Browser Guide, or by contacting your Internet Service Provider. However, given that we may sometimes use cookies you may not be able to take full advantage of our website if you do disable them.

Our Personal Internet Banking service uses session cookies to establish and maintain your banking session with us. With cookies enabled, you shouldn't notice any difference to the service. Personal Internet Banking requires your web browser to accept a session cookie before you can log on or register for the service. Session cookies only exist until you close down your web browser, as opposed to permanent cookies which your browser stores until they expire. If your browser is set to disable cookies, you won't be able to access Personal Internet Banking.

HSBC web pages may contain electronic images, known as web beacons or spotlight tags. These enable HSBC to count users who have visited certain pages on our website. Web beacons and spotlight tags are not used by us to access your personal information, they are simply a tool we use to analyse which web pages customers view, in an aggregated manner.

By maintaining our commitment to these principles, we at HSBC will ensure that we respect the inherent trust that you place in us.