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HSBC offers e-payment solution for real estate sector, first in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR: HSBC Bank Malaysia Bhd has partnered with Agile Property (Agile) to provide digital payment solution for their housing development account (HDA).

This new digital solution significantly reduces manual processes and digitalises the HDA payables process making HSBC Malaysia the first bank in the country to offer such a solution for local real estate sector.

HSBC Malaysia country head of corporate Karel Doshi said the on-going Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt many established processes for businesses and corporates alike.

"Agile faced challenges in making its business-as-usual

payments and to keep their operations running smoothly.

"We understood Agile's requirements and partnered with them to implement an eHDA (electronic housing development account)

payment solution for the client," he said in a statement today.

For property developers in Malaysia, HDAs are mandatory for all residential developments to safeguard the interest of residential buyers.

The developer will channel all payments received from buyers of a residential property into a specific HDA.

The payments from the HDA will then be used to pay for items such as quit rent, assessment rates, levy charges, stamp duty, insurance premiums, consultant fees and costs of construction.

The eHDA solution, a first of its kind solution in Malaysia, helped Agile migrate and eliminate all manual HDA payments to an online platform.

This has allowed Agile to execute payments electronically by utilising electronic transfers, significantly reducing paper-based payments and increase operational efficiencies.

"This eHDA solution has been ideal for us at Agile. The solution has not only allowed us to reduce our paper-based payments and made transactions faster and simpler, but it is also more cost-effective for us.

"As a multinational company, our internal payment approval involves multiple signatories across different countries and with the eHDA solution, we no longer need to forward

any physical documents to China for authorised signers to approve payments and sign the instructions," Agile Property Overseas finance director Grace Zhao.

HSBC Malaysia head of global liquidity and cash management Shayan Hazir said the conceptualisation of this eHDA proposition is a further testament to the bank's market-leading and client-centric solutions, which have won many recent accolades.

"In times like this, banks must be doing their part to impart knowledge, bridge connections, co-create with partners and all for the benefit of clients, communities and the economy," he said.

Shayan said HSBC Malaysia continue to invest on its resources in making banking seamless, efficient yet compliant.

"We are delighted to partner with Agile in digitising their business and creating an innovative solution which will ultimately benefit the real estate sector," he said.

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