(Bloomberg/Harry Wilson) — HSBC Holdings Plc said the increase in visa costs for foreign employees in the US is “manageable” for the lender as it has fewer workers there than some of its peers or major technology companies.
“We don’t have a huge amount of visa holders,” Michael Roberts, who heads the British lender’s corporate and institutional banking division, told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Monday. “For us, it is manageable.” It may be a “much bigger issue” for other financial services companies and tech firms he added.
Various HSBC units in the US received H1-B visas for 54 employees in the fiscal year 2025, according to the USCIS website. That compares to 2,440 at JPMorgan Chase & Co., the finance firm with the biggest cohort in the dataset.
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The Trump administration has raised the application fee for H-1B visas to $100,000 as part of efforts to protect American jobs and strengthen national security. The move has sparked chaos and alarm among some global companies, especially in the technology sector, which rely on the H-1B visa program to bring skilled workers to the US from abroad. Finance companies and consulting firms also use the facility.
Investor Cathie Wood said on Monday she was surprised by the change and expects other countries will benefit in the short term.
“Other countries should be looking at this as an opportunity to attract the best and the brightest,” Wood said on Bloomberg Radio. “As I said, I don’t think this is long-term for the United States, but seize the moment.”
Companies with the greatest number of H-1B visas are Amazon.com Inc., Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Microsoft Corp., Meta Platforms Inc. and Apple Inc., according to the US government data. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Walmart Inc. rank 8th and 9th.
Roberts said that like other firms, HSBC had a frantic weekend because of the initial uncertainty over how the change would be applied and enforced. A White House official eventually clarified that the fee only affects new visas — not renewals or current visa holders — and will be applied in the upcoming lottery cycle.
“It was unfortunate because the initial policy was unclear as to whether it was retroactive or prospective,” Roberts said. “Now they’ve clarified.”
–With assistance from Guy Johnson, Lizzy Burden, Kriti Gupta and James Woolcock.
(Adds USCIS data, Wood comments.)
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