Esha Mahbubani

digital verification

Opening a bank account can be quite the process, and if you had to go through this the traditional way, I’m sure you can attest.

There were many factors involved in launching the new digital identity verification solution for the HSBC HK app, including vendor selection, testing false positive and negative rates of facial scans and id scans, creating educational materials, and conducting user acceptance testing during app off-peak hours. We tested under a variety of conditions to validate the vendor quality and, in a way, try tricking the system to see how easy it would be to bypass it for fraud.

For a first rotation, this was an incredibly eye-opening experience into how thoroughly all aspects of a new rollout are vetted and ensure they pass through rigorous risk and legal requirements. We spoke with project leads in Poland and the UK, backend developers in China, and business heads in Hong Kong. a skill that may be underrated in terms of ‘technicality’ is stakeholder management, and i saw that on full display here. All in all, The scale at which these projects are delivered is something I’m eager to continue contributing to and advancing.

Alongside this project, I also conducted ad-hoc analysis on user drop-on and drop-off rates to ensure app stability and monitor the effects of system outages on key metrics. A particularly interesting analysis involved converting hourly-level data to minute-level data, which required experimentation with Google Looker Studio. This analysis revealed when most users accessed the app throughout the day, which directly informed our advertising campaigns, in-app messaging, and broader engagement strategies.

CREDIT CARD FRAUD ANALYSIS

My business risk and credit rotation was a fascinating rotation, as i came face to face with the team that had helped me years ago with a fradulent debit card case.

In University, a few months after exchange, i received a few strange messages from the bank where nearly 600£ was taken from my bank account. naturally, i freaked out, but was able to recover the money through the fraud operations teams help.

Flash foward to a few years down the line, and i worked with the same team who handled my case and was able to understand the start to finish operational flow of how a user can make a fraud claim to receiving their money back. this meant looking into the different channels in which they can raise a claim, the efficiency of going each route, and the different escalations matrices for the raised case. Then, I understood the requirements for raising a chargeback request with the card issuers (visa or mastercard) and in tandem, how hsbc evaluates whether or not to give redress to the customer.

This entire rotation opened my eyes to a world we come across everyday yet are unaware to the intricacies in which it works. besides what i learned, i helped to keep management intelligence dashboards for both visa and mastercard to show any anomalies in fraud alerts and cases.

GEN AI COMPLAINT AUTOMATION

My second rotation focused on implementing generative AI in the customer experience and relations department. I analyzed HSBC’s complaint management process, where handlers investigate complaints and draft formal responses, and identified a dual-input system (complaint category + summary) that could feed an AI model to generate standardized response drafts. By studying 20–30 historical complaint responses, I mapped which human inputs would most effectively trigger response generation for different complaint types.

we collaborated with the Microsoft Copilot team to build an AI-integrated complaint management solution using a Human-in-the-Loop validation framework, allowing handlers to input complaint details and receive AI-generated responses which were personalized and checked before sending. This approach augmented handler capabilities rather than replacing them, maintaining compliance with HKMA standards whilst eliminating manual drafting time.

To assess the impact, I led weekly testing sessions with 30+ handlers, iterating on AI prompts and establishing accuracy benchmarks. using their feedback, we changed each version to allow for more accurate prompting and generation. i also created the training materials, hosting sessions for complaint handlers to understand the systems capabilities and usage constraints.

Til date, this system is being used by frontline staff at hsbc, making what used to be an extremely manual and time-consuming task into a far more streamlined one. after the first and second round of testing, handlers reported a near 35% reduction in time spent per complaint case from 1 hr 15 mins + to under 45 minutes.

transaction banking Change Agent

for my ‘product’ rotation, i found myself in the transformation team essentially as a business analyst within the payments team.

this was the most hands-on and intense role i took on, as i had 3 months to understand the project scope, contribute, and also roll-off to another rotation. moreover, I had worked with agile methodology before in my prior roles, but this was the first time i truly understood why it was used and how it was implemented.

our work centered around adjusting the terms and conditions wording of different payment pages on the hsbc mobile app. why would this even matter you might ask? well, when sending money to a friend in hong kong vs a friend in canada or india, there are separate processes that happen in the backend to put those payments through. oftentimes we are unaware of these inner workings, however, each transaction has separate terms and conditions that a user has to accept to, subject to hkma requirements.

this rotation taught me how to manage stakeholders, and also work around the frustration that came with the constant back and forth between parties. i came to understand that this was common and aligning requirements between over 20 stakeholders was never to be an easy task. moreover, i honed my attention-to-detail, which was at the core of this project. The difference between the copy having one extra space, or a semicolon wrong could send us back to the beginning for approvals.

I am so grateful to have had this experience and i give my hats off to all the business analysts/change agents out there.