HSBC took to Twitter to apologise after receiving a record FSA fine.
It was hit by the watchdog for £10.5 million and must also pay £29.3 million to elderly people in care who were mis-sold investment bonds.
Almost 2,500 customers of the bank's subsidiary NHFA were advised to invest in order to fund care costs. HSBC tweeted: ‘We are truly sorry for what happened at NHFA and are writing to all customers impacted in the next few weeks’, whilst also pointing out that the majority of the NHFA advisors were self-employed IFAs and did not advise on any HSBC-related products/services.
It also posted a link to a press release in which Brian Robertson, chief executive at HSBC Bank, said: "I fully accept that NHFA failed to give suitable financial advice to some of their customers. This should not have happened and I am profoundly sorry that it did. We have high values here at HSBC and this runs contrary to everything that we stand for. That is why when we suspected something was not right at NHFA, we took action. We advised the FSA of our findings and closed NHFA to new business on 1 July 2011.”
He added: "We are undertaking a full review of the advice given to impacted customers and I can guarantee that every customer who is found to have not been treated fairly will not be disadvantaged. At this stage NHFA customers do not need to contact us. We will be contacting them directly during the coming weeks with the aim of putting things right as quickly as possible."
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