“The demand on credit is certainly broadening. Whether you’re building applications or foundational models, the hardware and chips that power those models, or data centers and energy, each innovator and each investor working on that opportunity requires a different form of capital.”

In this episode of On Call with Insignia Ventures, host Paulo Joquino sits down with Jonathan Yip, Head of Innovation Banking, Asia at HSBC, recorded live at HSBC’s office in downtown Singapore. The conversation explores what “innovation banking” actually means in practice, from how a global bank serves two unusually demanding sets of customers (founders and venture capital firms) to the specific liquidity, treasury, and cross-border needs of companies that are born global from day one. Jonathan and Paulo dig into how the AI cycle is broadening the demand for capital across applications, foundational models, hardware, data centers, and energy, why CFOs in this environment can leapfrog the traditional finance-team maturity curve, and how multipolarity is reshaping but not unwinding the global flow of talent and capital. The episode closes with Jonathan’s framework for what makes companies endure in this cycle: the three Cs of customers, connections, and capital.

About Our Guest

Jonathan Yip is Managing Director and Head of Innovation Banking, Asia at HSBC, where he leads teams across the region serving high-growth technology businesses and the venture capital firms that back them. HSBC formally appointed him to the role in September 2025 to scale its innovation banking platform across key Asian markets. Since joining HSBC in 2008, Jonathan has held a number of international roles across Global Banking in Hong Kong, New York, and San Francisco, with a coverage focus on global technology and media companies, and he previously served as Head of Global Banking for HSBC Korea, where he led the franchise’s expansion into the new economy and sustainable finance. HSBC launched its Innovation Banking arm in 2023 to provide a tailored suite of banking and financial services to start-ups and their investors, and now operates the platform across ten of the world’s leading innovation hubs within HSBC’s wider 57-market footprint. Jonathan holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Canada.

Timestamps

1:08 – What Is Innovation Banking

2:10 – HSBC Innovation Platform

3:55 – Liquidity and Treasury Needs

5:46 – Scaling Across Borders

7:18 – Asia Innovation Learning Curve

8:51 – Credit Demand in AI Era

10:39 – AI Tools for Modern CFOs

13:10 – Geopolitics and the Three Cs

Transcript

What Is Innovation Banking

Paulo: First of all, I think we start with the basics. What is innovation banking? What does it mean for HSBC and for yourself, who has worked at HSBC for a couple of years now? What role does innovation banking play in this evolution of how HSBC delivers services to clients?

Jonathan: Thank you. I think firstly, you have to really take a step back and recognize that the stakeholders that participate in the innovation economy are fundamentally unique. Those that invest for the future and those that build for the future. They think differently, they behave differently, and they have a very unique perspective of how the world should be organized.

They’re putting real dollars into building the world that they believe will transpire over the next five to ten years. And for many founders, they’re also very unique characters as well. Many of them are very technically sound, very smart, have a sense of purpose in life, graduated from amazing schools, and are really on a journey to shape a world or build a business around what they fundamentally believe in.

The HSBC Innovation Banking Platform

Jonathan: When you take two very unique categories of clients and put them together, what HSBC is attempting to do is build a global banking proposition that allows us to serve these two categories of customers at scale. That’s what innovation banking is about.

I think about it as a platform that supports global prosperity. I think about it as a platform that allows both investors and founders to tell their story in terms of how they see the world and what opportunities they’re working on. Within the bank, we have built a team of bankers that are located in ten of the world’s deepest venture capital markets, all with a focus to support venture capital firms and their banking needs, founders and their banking needs, and make banking as frictionless as possible so they can focus on what they do best, which is find the next biggest opportunity, or devote the majority of their time to building the product or the proposition they fundamentally really believe in.

In each of our markets, we’re split into four different teams. We have a team that covers the startups themselves. We have a team that banks the funds. We have a team that underwrites credit specifically for the investors, the funds, and the startups. And we have a team that covers the GPs and does business development across the ecosystem.

So when you put that together, it’s really a community of bankers that’s here to support innovators and investors.

Paulo: And it’s a very holistic approach, considering the different stakeholders in the innovation ecosystems that you guys serve. I have the pleasure of working with one of those teams pretty closely, and that’s what allowed this kind of conversation to come together. So really grateful for this opportunity.

Liquidity and Treasury Needs

Paulo: For the rest of the conversation, given the context of creating this community of bankers as you mentioned, I wanted to discuss a couple of top-of-mind things that startups, investors, and especially finance teams in these companies have these days.

Number one is definitely liquidity. Even when we talk to our own portfolio CFOs, that’s one of their top-of-mind things on a day-to-day basis. Especially for multi-market organizations, you want to make sure that all your eggs are not in one basket. You want to make sure it’s working efficiently for your company, even if it’s quote-unquote “idle.” What has your experience been so far, working with CFOs at some of these startups, or even CFOs at these venture capital firms, in terms of helping them achieve their liquidity needs?

Jonathan: First, I would say that the venture capital market over the last couple of years has just gotten larger, and so the money is there. I don’t have the exact figures with me, but if you take a look at 2024, I think roughly about 300 to 350 billion dollars of capital has been deployed into venture capital through the year. In 2025, I think that’s gone to 425, and 2026 is probably going to smash the records as well. A lot of that is being concentrated into AI and very specific sectors. Funding-wise, the market is functioning; it’s just that it’s becoming more selective around where it goes — which markets, which opportunities.

When it comes to working with the CFOs of venture capital firms, our focus is really about how do you open accounts quickly for them? How do you give them the visibility of where their cash is? We want to go extremely deep with them in terms of the banking infrastructure as it ties into their fund operations. You think about fund one, fund two, fund three. You think about the SPV accounts, the management accounts — and really wrap a holistic banking solution around their needs.

Scaling Across Borders

Jonathan: As it relates to startups themselves, different startups are at different stages of their journey. Earlier-stage companies that we work with are a lot more focused on building the product itself. Their treasury needs are a little bit simpler. But as they continue to scale and as they go into overseas and different markets, we see a lot more international requirements start to emerge. Today’s companies are actually a lot more global from a much earlier stage than the prior generation of innovation, I would say.

Paulo: And AI has a lot to do with it, I would suspect. With the product that you’re delivering, you’re not necessarily tied to a single market. You obviously want to expand and scale as rapidly as possible. And on a venture capital front, I think it’s really interesting that you have a value proposition that already takes into account more long-term thinking, not just for the first fund, but for future funds and other vehicles for other asset classes.

Jonathan: Yeah, the focus is making it as frictionless as possible. They need to not think about banking and just have that trusted partner that understands how they operate, what they’re investing in, the sector they’re participating in, and some of the opportunities and challenges they’re solving for. And really just speak the exact same language as what this community is used to.

The Asia Innovation Learning Curve

Paulo: Personally leading the innovation banking team in Asia, was there a learning curve for you in terms of trying to figure out what VC firms or startups need over the last few years?

Jonathan: I’ve been working on this agenda for almost two years now. I think Asia is one of the most incredible regions in the world, growing extremely quickly. It’s extremely diverse. Each sub-region within Asia has a different form of innovation that is occurring.

If you think about where I’m based, in Hong Kong, a lot of it is centered around advanced manufacturing and AI. Singapore is really around digitization, embedding AI into the ASEAN market, and finding out how Singapore can support the markets that operate around it through new forms of capital, talent, and new ways to monetize business opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist in a brick-and-mortar sort of world. India is just a very structurally positive market for both investors and builders. What India has done over the last ten years has been pretty incredible in allowing businesses to fully digitize and build in ways that brick-and-mortar was not able to.

So I think the learning curve is twofold. One is really appreciating the diversity that Asia represents. But equally, it’s about bringing cultures together. The teams in India, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and China are very different. As you’re trying to build a platform that is global in nature, you want everyone operating with the same rhythm, speaking the same language, and culturally understanding what we’re trying to do and how we’re supporting the community. That’s been an incredible journey over the last two years.

Credit Demand in the AI Era

Paulo: I was curious to know from a startup standpoint these days, you see a lot more startups being more open-minded when it comes to the type of funding they typically look out for and receive. Not necessarily limiting it to just equity, especially if the business model demands it. Let’s say they’re in lending or whatnot. What are the kinds of insights you’ve seen so far in terms of the demand for credit, in particular debt, for startups?

Jonathan: I think the demand on credit is certainly broadening. What’s different in this cycle of innovation versus the last cycle is how these business models come together. In the era of AI, it’s different from a generation ago, where you’d start a business, get some venture capital funding, create a platform, scale it across one home market, and as you do well, you expand into different countries.

When I look at how the whole ecosystem is coming together, whether you’re building applications or you’re building foundational models, or you’re building the hardware and the chips that power some of these models, or it’s data centers or it’s energy, each innovator or each investor that’s working on that opportunity requires a different form of capital. Some of it requires more patient capital, some of it requires more venture capital, some of it is about private credit, and some of it is about venture debt. So it’s gotten a lot more complex, I would say. For people operating and building in this space, it’s really important to find the right partners with the right risk appetite and those that certainly share the same vision around the opportunity that you see.

Paulo: You went through what I guess we often call — Jensen Huang coined this term — the five-layer AI cake.

Jonathan: Yeah, they call it the five-layer cake. But it is a great way to frame it. Structurally, this is how it’s coming together. And there’s a different form of capital for each layer of the stack, I would say.

AI Tools for the Modern CFO

Paulo: Related to that, how do you see AI really impacting the way that finance teams, CFOs, or just startups and VCs in general, think about the way they work with banks, or do their financial management or treasury?

Jonathan: I think AI is such a big game changer for CFOs and for funds. The tools that it enables show up in a couple of ways. One is around productivity, and that’s a given. The speed at which you’re able to analyze documents, the speed at which you’re able to do due diligence.

But for the more sophisticated players, I would say it really gives you tools that, for a lot of smaller funds, smaller startup companies, or mid-market companies generally, you would never otherwise be able to get. It would take you years and years of growth, and I guess institutional team-building, to get some of these capabilities. So it’s almost like a great level-setter to bring startup organizations to operate at the same level of professionalism as maybe a large cap.

There are two areas for CFOs, I would say. One is certainly using these tools as a way to automate things, gain visibility, and apply predictive analytics to really shave time off your day. But the other piece is: how do you transform your organization and accelerate the maturity curve that allows you to operate like a large company at scale?

For some of the more sophisticated CFOs that I work with, it’s not just about reporting, or “where’s my cash,” or forecasting. It’s actually embedding AI into the sales process, for example, so that you can detect in a very unemotional way: “I know you’re the top salesperson, but it looks like you could have done a little bit better here.” And really going into the operational aspects of the business and driving more financial value for the company.

Paulo: So it’s not really removing the silos, especially between operations and frontline revenue drivers, from the finance team, which is typically seen almost like a back-office, do-the-books kind of thing. You want to move both.

Jonathan: You have an opportunity to lead from the front. And it just gives you visibility that you’ve never had before. I still think we’re very early in that journey. Not all CFOs are AI-native. Many are on that learning curve today, too.

Paulo: So I guess this whole mission to make things more frictionless goes multiple ways. It’s not just the services themselves, but also how they’re delivered. Working with these startups would eventually pay dividends in terms of being able to integrate the new technologies or innovations that they may have down the line that could make things even more frictionless, not just for startups, but for other organizations.

Geopolitics, Multipolarity, and the World Beneath the Noise

Paulo: I also wanted to talk about, I guess, the term “multipolarity” and the kind of geopolitical uncertainty that gets thrown around these days. How has that impacted the sentiment of startups and VCs that you work with, in the way they work with you guys specifically?

Jonathan: Maybe I’ll take a step back. I know it’s very easy to take a look at the broad narrative of volatility and geostrategic and geopolitical discussions. But I genuinely, fundamentally believe that in the world of AI and supply chain and everything that’s happened the last five to ten years the world is actually becoming closer together. It’s genuine.

In terms of company formation, for example, we’re seeing companies that are born day one global. You could have a company that’s dual-headquartered in the US and Singapore. They might have their tech development team in India or China. And the go-to-market might be very different too. It could be [expanding to] Japan, or Switzerland, or Australia.

In the midst of a lot of the fear or noise around geopolitics, I genuinely think that underground  or beneath that is a community that is still functioning cohesively. I always think that innovation is very pragmatic. A financial dollar is very pragmatic. A smart dollar will find a smart investor. A smart investor will find a smart builder. And a smart idea will go across borders.

Paulo: It’s really important to have that fundamental kind of conviction about the future. Otherwise, what’s innovation for, really? Really thinking long-term, being pragmatic and at the same time very optimistic about the future. And that obviously means you have to work with different people across all of these markets.

The Three Cs: Customers, Connections, and Capital

Paulo: I wanted to wrap up our conversation going back to the people that you work closest with, the CFOs. From the experience you’ve had working with not just CFOs at startups or VCs, but various clients over the years, what are some of the things that you’ve learned from these partners in terms of what it takes to really build a sustainable, enduring company?

Jonathan: There’s one thing I think about every day as we’re building innovation banking. We’ll call it the three Cs: customers, connections, and capital. As we’re building this platform, I’m trying to find a way to optimize for all three.

In innovation banking, we have a platform that allows us to connect startups with new customers, because we bank a number of mid-cap to large-cap companies. How we solve that through ecosystem events or introductions is one thing we’re working on.

For connections, we work very closely with our investment bank. We work very closely with our private bank to open the door of new conversations and new networks that allow founders to get fresh ideas and meet new people. We do a lot of ecosystem events too, bringing in regulators and science parks as well, to curate a community that finds a reason to connect.

And then there’s capital. Capital can come from various forms: the public markets, private markets, even banks. We do lending and venture debt for our clients.

I think that’s the way that CFOs should really think about their organization, too. Really, the core mission of what your company is about. Who are the customers you’re serving? What is the purpose, and what is the value that you’re providing to society? Always think about connections in this world of innovation that we’re seeing today; no one has the right answer to it. You need different forms of capital, different partners. Continue reaching out to people that play critical roles inside the innovation ecosystem, whether it’s lawyers, bankers, or accountants. And always think about capital. Think about where your money is. Think about how you optimize for cross-border risks, for example. Think about the capital stack, the right mix of equity and debt. And if you are to take on debt, the number one rule to debt is always: just make sure you can repay it. Otherwise, it gets extremely painful.

That would be my general advice for CFOs. Really, instead of just focusing on the financial side of things or the reporting side of things, really think much more broadly across the three Cs, and try to create value through that.

The CFO of the Future

Paulo: Thematically throughout our conversation, the message is really that there’s a lot more that CFOs can be doing in terms of driving their organization forward, working with their CEOs or other C-levels to really build a great company. One that serves as many people as possible and creates a positive impact for their markets.

Jonathan: You start out with the numbers, and the numbers don’t lie. They’ll tell you the health of how the organization is doing. That is phenomenal visibility over the core architecture of the firm. And then you layer on the tools and capabilities that AI can bring. Suddenly, now you can bring on more operational value to the organization, both in terms of driving sales, new ways of doing things, new ways of architecting things.

Paulo: On that note, and speaking of community: this recording precedes an event that we’ll be doing with HSBC Innovation Banking, specifically on the topic of helping CFOs really unlock what they can do for their organizations, whether it’s through working with HSBC or leveraging AI and all these different tools. So I’m really excited for that. But even before the event, thank you for joining me in this good conversation, and thanks for all the insights and sharing.

Jonathan: Appreciate it. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.

References

• HSBC Korea (2021, February 15). HSBC Korea confirms appointment of Jonathan Yip as Head of Global Banking. https://www.about.hsbc.co.kr/-/media/Korea/en/news-and-media/210215-hsbc-korea-appoints-new-head-of-global-banking-en.pdf
• Global CEO Magazine (2025, September 3). HSBC Appoints Jonathan Yip as Head of Innovation Banking Asia. https://globalceomag.com/hsbc-appoints-jonathan-yip-as-head-of-innovation-banking-asia/
• HSBC Innovation Banking. Cultivating a global community that fuels innovation. https://www.hsbcinnovationbanking.com/en/resources/cultivating-a-global-community-that-fuels-innovation