HSBC, Avant Team On Personal Loans

HSBC Holdings announced that it is teaming up with online lender Avant to offer unsecured loans to consumers.

In the first half of 2019, HSBC’s U.S. arm will utilize Avant’s platform to offer personal loans as high as $30,000 with terms up to five years. Consumers can apply in minutes and have the money in their account within a day, with rates anywhere from 5.99 percent to the low-20 percent range.

“Every year millions of consumers take out a loan to pay for unexpected expenses, consolidate debt or for needed home improvements, among other things,” Pablo Sanchez, HSBC’s head of retail banking and wealth management in the U.S. and Canada, said in the statement, according to Bloomberg. “By adding personal loans to our expanding product suite, we’re meeting the needs of today’s consumers who want a safe, fast and easy way to get an online loan.”

The companies have been working on this partnership for two years.

“Personal loans are an area of opportunity,” Jeremy Balkin, head of innovation for HSBC U.S.’s retail-banking and wealth-management business, said in an interview. “This is an open-market platform so we can grow our business outside of our footprint.”

This is the latest effort in digital banking from HSBC, which revealed earlier this year that it was launching a multi-account app for customers in the U.K. The new app, which was dubbed “Connected Money,” garnered 13,000 downloads within one day of its rollout.

Through the app, users can take a look at their accounts at up to 21 different banks. In the future, the app will give users savings suggestions created with insight from their spending habits. In addition, the app will round transactions to the nearest pound: The extra funds will be put in a savings account.

Raman Bhatia, head of Digital, U.K. and Europe, at HSBC Retail Banking and Wealth Management, told Reuters that the app puts the bank in consumers’ minds. “You can draw a line from there to the commercial upside,” Bhatia said.