Cookie Policy

Understanding how and why we use cookies

We use cookies on our website www.hsbc.com.au/business (the 'Site') to distinguish you from other users. This helps us to improve your experience when using our Site and to ensure the Site performs as you expect it to. This Cookie Policy should be read together with the Terms and Conditions governing your use of the Site. For ease of reference, the same definitions used in the Terms and Conditions are adopted in this Cookie Policy.

This Cookie Policy provides you with clear and comprehensive information about the cookies we use and the purposes for using them.

By continuing to browse the Site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. You can amend your cookie preferences via our Cookie Settings tool, for further information please see "How you can manage your cookies" below.

Where we use cookies to collect personal information, this will be carried out in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Please read this policy carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal information and how we will treat it.

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are sent to and stored on your computer, smartphone or other device for accessing the internet, whenever you visit a website. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user's device. We use the following cookies on this Site:

'Strictly necessary' cookies: These cookies are essential in order to enable you to move around the Site and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website.
'Performance Cookies': These cookies collect information about how visitors use the Site, for instance which pages visitors go to most often, and if they get error messages from web pages. These cookies don't collect information that identifies a visitor. All information these cookies collect is aggregated and therefore anonymous. It is only used to improve how our Site works.
'Functionality Cookies': These cookies allow the Site to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced, more personal features.
'Targeting cookies or advertising cookies': These cookies are used to deliver adverts more relevant to you and your interests. They are also used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement as well as help measure the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns.

We may use cookies for a variety of other reasons including to determine preferences, let users navigate between pages efficiently, verify the user and carry out other essential security checks. Some of the functions that cookies perform can also be achieved using similar technologies. This policy refers to 'cookies' throughout, however it also covers these alternate mechanisms.

For a detailed description of the cookies that we use on this Site, please see “A list of cookies that we use” below.

More information about cookies can be found on www.allaboutcookies.org.

How cookies make our websites safer and easier to use

Cookies are used for a variety of reasons, such as to improve the functionality and performance of this Site and to allow us to tailor the content of the Site to suit your interests.

When we include links to third party websites, please bear in mind they will have their own privacy and cookie policies that will govern the use of any information you submit. We recommend you read their policies as we are not responsible or liable for any third party's privacy practices.

How you can manage your cookies

The browsers of most computers, smartphones and other web-enabled devices are typically set up to accept cookies. You can amend your cookie preferences for this Site using our Cookie Settings tool.

You do not have to accept cookies, however, please remember that cookies are often used to enable and improve certain functions on our Site. If you choose to switch certain cookies off, it is likely to affect how our Site works and you may not be able to access all or parts of the Site.

For more information about how to disable cookies, visit www.allaboutcookies.org.

How long the cookies will remain on your computer

The single session cookie is a temporary cookie which remains in the cookie file of your browser until you close the browser.

The other cookies will remain in the cookie file of your browser after the closing of the browser, and will become active again when you reopen the Site. These cookies have different expiration dates. Following expiry of a cookie, a new version of that cookie will be downloaded when you next visit the Website, unless you have withdrawn your consent in the meantime.

How we work with trusted third parties

Third parties are trusted suppliers to HSBC. They include our insurance policy providers, partners who provide important functionality to our website, such as our live chat service, and partners who help us improve our website, such as Heap Analytics, Heap who provide statistics about which pages are visited most frequently.

We only use cookies from third parties in order to provide our customers with HSBC products and services. The only time cookies would enable us to share personal information such as your name, address, telephone or email is when you have given us express consent to pass it on to a trusted third party - for example, if you were applying for an insurance product from one of our third party insurance providers.

You will only ever be shown HSBC-branded advertisements on our website - never those from other companies. Of course, you may see HSBC-branded advertisements when browsing other companies' websites too. Some of these will be general campaign-related adverts but others will be tailored to your likely interests based upon previous web browsing activity - these can be easily identified as they feature a small blue AdChoices icon in the corner of the advert.

More about your privacy

To find out more about how HSBC protects your privacy when using our website, see our website Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this Cookies Policy are welcomed and should be submitted via the Site's 'Contact Us' form, which can be found here.

A list of cookies that we use

Strictly necessary cookies

Please see below for a detailed list of the 'Strictly necessary' cookies used on this Site.


Cookie name	Description
ASP.NET_SessionId	This cookie assigns a unique ID to your session to connect it to the server and for other internal processes required throughout the course of the session.
CONSENTMGR	This cookie will be used to store the overall consent captured from the cookie settings tool.
tms_ref	This cookie will be used to store the session referrer.

Performance Cookie

Please see below for a detailed list of the 'Performance' cookies used on this Site.


Cookie name	Description
__ncuid	These cookies preserve user states across page requests. It improves performance and security of the website.
_ga	Google Analytics cookie – used to distinguish unique users by assigning a randomly generated number to them. Used to calculate visitor, session and campaign data
_gat_ncAudienceInsightsGa	Google Analytics cookie - Used to throttle the request rate.
_gid	Google Analytics cookie - Used to distinguish users.
TAPID	Tealium tag - used by tealium tag manager , Tealium AudienceStream, and Tealium EventStream for tracking visitors between domains by storing unique id on the user's first visit
utag_main	This cookie used by our sites to manage tags on each of our pages.
viewCount	Increments each page view in a session
optimizelyEndUserID	Optimizely cookie stores a visitor's unique Optimizely Experimentation identifier. It is a combination of a timestamp and a random number. No other information about you or your visitors is stored inside.
_hp2_id.APP_ID	Heap’s cookie to identify a unique visitor (first touch & return visits)
_hp2_ses_props.APP_ID	Heap’s cookie to identify session details (such as storing timestamp and traffic source)
_hp2_props.APP_ID	Heap's cookie to store event details (collected through the addEventProperties API)
_hp2_hld.	Used by Heap to determine which domain a cookie can be set on
D41ID	Used by Dun & Bradstreet and contain a GUID that uniquely identifies that individual in our cloud-based cache.

Functionality cookies

Please see below for a detailed list of the 'Functionality' cookies used on this Site.


Cookie name	Description
globalcmbaustralia#lang	This cookie is used to remember your language settings.
lang	Used to store language preferences, potentially to serve up content in the stored language.
li_oatml	LinkedIn cookie
liap	Cookie used for Sign-in with LinkedIn and/or for LinkedIn follow feature
lidc	LinkedIn cookie - Used by the social networking service, LinkedIn, for tracking the use of embedded services.
UserMatchHistory	LinkedIn - Used to track visitors on multiple websites, in order to present relevant advertisement based on the visitor's preferences.

Targeting cookies or advertising cookies

Please see below for a detailed list of the 'Targeting cookies or advertising' cookies used on this Site.


Cookie name	Description
bcookie	These cookies are used to optimise the range of advertising on LinkedIn. For more information about LinkedIn cookies, please visit https://www.LinkedIn.com/legal/cookie-table
BizoID	LinkedIn Ad analytics - This is a Microsoft MSN 1st party cookie to enable user-based content.
bscookie	Secure browser ID cookie - Used by the social networking service, LinkedIn, for tracking the use of embedded services.
ELOQUA	This cookie is set by the Eloqua Marketing Automation Tool. It contains a unique identifier to recognize returning visitors and track their visit data across multiple visits. When you first visit a website, a third party cookie is stored in your browser. This cookie is then used to track the pages that you visit during your session.
ELQSTATUS	This cookie is set by Eloqua as a permission to recognise visitors and track activity.
everest_g_v2	Adobe Advertising Cloud cookie - Media Optimizer sets the everest_g_v2 cookie after a user clicks on a client's ad. This cookie maps clicks to other events on the client's website and is set in the eversttech.net domain.
everest_session_v2	Adobe Advertising Cloud cookie - A third-party browser session cookie; one cookie is used for all accounts.
IDE	These cookies are created by Google DoubleClick and are used to show personalized advertisements (ads) based on previous visits to our website.