HSBC AI Markets: How Data Unlocks Next-Gen Trading Opportunities

HSBC's AI Markets platform cuts through financial noise—transforming raw data into actionable alpha.

The Algorithmic Edge

Machine learning models bypass traditional analysis bottlenecks, processing market signals at institutional scale. Real-time pattern recognition spots opportunities human traders might miss during volatile sessions.

Data-Driven Execution

Natural language processing digests earnings calls, regulatory filings, and news flow simultaneously. The system correlates unstructured data with price movements—flagging anomalies before they hit mainstream radar.

Institutional Adoption Accelerates

Banks finally embrace what crypto natives perfected years ago: automated systems don't get emotional during flash crashes. They just execute. (Though watching legacy institutions play catch-up does provide some comic relief—their 'innovation' cycles move at regulatory speed.)

The platform represents finance's inevitable shift toward quantified decision-making. Whether traditional players can keep pace remains the real question.

Institutional traders need to extract more value from their data, and they are increasingly leveraging platforms powered by the most advanced technologies to help them do so.

In a July 2025 report, Crisil Coalition Greenwich said demand for AI among buy-side equity traders “has grown from a whisper to a roar,” with efficiencies eyed across trading workflows. In its industry report, Celent said “all roads seem to lead to AI …digitization, advanced data analytics, and ambitions in (Gen)AI heavily rely on robust data management and delivery.”

As only the largest and deepest-pocketed asset managers and corporates can build and maintain their own advanced data analytics suites for trading, most firms rely on partners to provide a gateway to global markets. For instance, HSBC AI Markets harnesses natural language processing and machine learning to meet market participants’ trading and hedging needs, from pre-trade analysis, to execution, to post-trade.

Markets Media caught up with Tom Croft, Head of AI Markets and Data Sales at HSBC, to learn more about the platform.

Tom Croft, Head of AI Markets and Data Sales, HSBC

I’ve worked in finance for 18 years, ten years at HSBC. I’ve spent most of my time at HSBC working on growing our electronic FX options business and our HSBC AI Markets platform, which originally grew out of the FX options business before more recently becoming a markets-wide platform. In my current role I lead distribution and sales of HSBC AI Markets as well as commercialisation of the associated data from the platform.

HSBC AI Markets is a cross-asset data analytics tool and trading terminal. It’s a gateway into a huge wealth of information, data and analytics from across our MSS trading businesses and from HSBC Global Investment Research, coupled with our FX single dealer platform trading functionality.

The upshot is that you can understand what’s going on in the world, understand what’s happening in global markets, and then execute your trades.

The platform was originally conceived about six or seven years ago as an internal-only tool to help with risk management and automated pricing. It launched to institutional clients in May 2023, and I’m excited to say we’re now rolling out a new version of the platform, with a new and improved terminal application.

Historically clients have been mostly institutional buy side – hedge funds and asset managers. We also have a number of tier-two and regional bank clients. We are also live for corporate clients, making it a holistic offering across our Corporate and Institutional Banking franchise.

HSBC has a very broad business footprint, spanning many asset classes, trading desks, and geographies. HSBC AI Markets is, first and foremost, a tool to provide colleagues and clients with instant access to data from those businesses. Global markets have evolved, and what our clients expect from us has evolved. We have always been and we remain a leading price Maker for trade execution, and now we’re increasingly known for content, and for data and  analytics. Our trading businesses have expanded from a universe of price provision, to also providing much richer color on the markets, and HSBC AI Markets is the gateway for accessing that.

HSBC AI Markets is a key channel for our clients to interact with market data and access our pricing and services, via a chatbot driven by natural language. This chatbot enables access to a massive variety of different tools – so whether you want to monitor liquidity in FX markets, or analyse major upcoming economic events, or look at central bank rates and how they’ve evolved, all that information is there.

Whatever the precise combination of different analytics that you want, or the trade that you want to place, or the HSBC research that you want to read, you can do it all much quicker on HSBC AI Markets.

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What is HSBC AI Markets? This one-minute video explains:

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We’ve seen excellent and growing adoption from our client base. We have a large number of institutional clients regularly using the platform. Now we’re rolling out HSBC AI Markets to our corporate client base, which should really accelerate adoption across our client businesses.

There are some great platforms on The Street. But we believe HSBC AI Markets is different by being able to offer the breadth and quality of content that HSBC generates, combined with a natural language chatbot-style interface, as well as data, analytics and execution. We consistently get client feedback that that’s what sets the platform apart. Other offerings may provide those elements individually, but if you’re looking for a one-stop shop, the feedback we get is that we’re leading the way in that area.

We plan to increase our cross-asset client-facing content. We’re focused on our global debt and equity businesses at the moment, and we’re working hard to provide a breadth of content across the Markets & Securities Services business. We’re also improving the parsing and NLP and how we search HSBC Global Investment Research to make that even quicker and more accurate, and we’re continually improving the navigation of the platform.

First and foremost, we want to continue to lead in the areas we focus on right now – on provision of relevant and useful cross-asset market analytics and best execution. Then as the AI world continues to evolve, we expect to provide a bigger and better selection of tools that will allow our clients to solve problems and automate workflows more quickly than they can now.

We want to continue to focus on data provision, time savings, and efficiency gains for our clients, so we can be that one-stop-shop platform.

At HSBC we’re not about following the market, we’re about leading it by combining the strength of the bank with cutting-edge data, insights, and execution. Turning data into opportunity for clients.