Pam Kaur, group chief financial officer at HSBC, intends to step down in 2027, the bank has said.

Indian-born Kaur became HSBC’s first female group chief financial officer in January 2025, taking on the role from the firm’s current chief executive Georges Elhedery. Her appointment, which broke boundaries at the firm, followed three years in the role of group chief risk and compliance officer at the bank,

Kaur has worked at HSBC since April 2013, during which time she has held successive senior roles focused on audits and risk.

In her 36-year career, she has also held the roles of global head of group audit at Deutsche Bank, chief financial officer and chief operating at RBS, group head of compliance and anti-money laundering at Lloyds Banking Group, and chief compliance officer at Citi.

The exact date of Kaur’s exit from HSBC has not been announced, though the firm made clear that she will leave her position ahead of its 2027 annual general meeting which is generally held in May.

HSBC indicated that it would look both internally and externally for Kaur’s replacement.

“With the bank in a strong place, financially and strategically, 2027 feels like the right time in my career to embrace new leadership opportunities and apply my experience in a different context,” Kaur said, as reported by AJ Bell.

Kaur has overseen a more than 125 per cent rise in HSBC’s shares in her time as chief financial officer. In that time, Elhedery has also targeted major efficiency savings at the bank, pledging to make HSBC a “simple, more agile, focused bank built for a fast-changing world”.

In July HSBC agreed to sell HSBC Life Singapore to Allianz for €2 billion and in August the bank announced it would sell its Australian home loan portfolio to Blackstone for $25 billion.

The same month, the Financial Times revealed that HSBC had axed 134 of its most senior employees over the course of 2025. This was its largest annual round of cuts since 2008 and cost the bank $67.5 million in severance packages.

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