HSBC hires new chief for one of its most critical Hong Kong teams

HSBC has hired Annette Neeson as chief data officer for Hong Kong. Neeson was previously the Sydney-based head of group data management for Commonwealth Bank, according to her LinkedIn profile.

She has secured a coveted role at HSBC. Hong Kong is the firm’s largest market, and the job market for senior data roles is fiercely competitive as banks in Asia expand their data teams.

Neeson’s hire is further evidence that HSBC is still willing to relocate people into Hong Kong to fill senior tech roles, despite the pandemic and the bank’s global restructuring plans, which involve 35,000 job cuts, mainly in Western markets. As we were the first to report in April, Jonathan Scott-Lee from Standard Chartered in Singapore moved to HSBC in Hong Kong as chief information security officer for Asia Pacific.

Neeson had been with Commonwealth Bank since October 2016 when she took on a senior marketing operations role. She was promoted to her data chief role in February 2018, and led a team that designed and rolled out a “data management transformational change programme”.  

Prior to Commonwealth, Neeson spent more than four years as general manager, analytical data and capability, for Telstra, the Australian telecoms company. She was with Macquarie in Sydney between 2010 and 2012 as a CRM (customer relationship management) and data subject matter expert. Neeson began her career in the early 1990s, and has held several senior roles since then, including director of CRM strategy (banking and finance) at technology firm NCR.

Demand for data professionals in Hong Kong and Singapore who are “technically strong yet have the ability to hire and manage a team remain in constant demand by financial institutions and tech firms alike,” Don Zhao, associate director of technology at Space Executive, told us in May. “Now that data and algorithms continue to drive banks’ strategies in areas like automation and detecting fraudulent activities, there will be continued growth and demand for this skill set,” he adds.

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