{"id":439514,"date":"2025-12-11T06:45:32","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T06:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/439514\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T06:45:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T06:45:32","slug":"hong-kong-banks-keep-prime-rates-unchanged-despite-hkma-base-rate-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/439514\/","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong banks keep prime rates unchanged despite HKMA base rate cut"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Hong Kong\u2019s three note-issuing banks \u2013 HSBC, Standard Chartered and Bank of China (Hong Kong) \u2013 have kept their prime lending and savings rates unchanged, even though the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) lowered the base rate on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Analysts said commercial banks found it difficult to reduce lending rates further because savings rates were already close to zero, meaning any cut in prime lending rates alone would erode profitability. Hong Kong banks set their own interest rates and are not obliged to follow HKMA decisions.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">HSBC and Bank of China (Hong Kong) kept their prime lending rate at 5 per cent, while Standard Chartered maintained its lending rate at 5.25 per cent, according to separate statements from the lenders on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">They would also maintain their Hong Kong dollar savings rate at 0.001 per cent per annum, leaving no interest for deposits below HK$5,000, the banks said. HSBC said it would also cut its US dollar savings rate by 12.4 basis points to 0.001 per cent, aligning it with the Hong Kong dollar rate.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Hong Kong\u2019s three note-issuing banks, including HSBC, have kept their prime lending and savings rates unchanged. Photo: Jelly Tse\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/e27c9088-7883-45fb-8061-f642b83740ec_60cbb88c.jpg\" title=\"Hong Kong\u2019s three note-issuing banks, including HSBC, have kept their prime lending and savings rates unchanged. Photo: Jelly Tse\"\/>Hong Kong\u2019s three note-issuing banks, including HSBC, have kept their prime lending and savings rates unchanged. Photo: Jelly Tse<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cBig banks did not follow the HKMA to cut their prime rate this time because they have to cut both the prime lending rate and the savings rate at the same time to maintain the margin between the two,\u201d said Tommy Ong, managing director at T.O. &amp; Associates Consultancy. \u201cThe current savings rate is close to zero, and they cannot move savings rates into negative territory.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong\u2019s three note-issuing banks \u2013 HSBC, Standard Chartered and Bank of China (Hong Kong) \u2013 have kept&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":439515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,202983,12293,69,79,202984,8464,202982,142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-439514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cme-fedwatch","10":"tag-covid-19-pandemic","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-federal-open-market-committee-fomc","14":"tag-hong-kong","15":"tag-hong-kong-monetary-authority-hkma","16":"tag-jerome-powell","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115699589774315280","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}