Punch Above the Weight

Amid the volatile real estate market, HSBC, as a performance-driven challenger brand, needed media to work three times as hard (as twice is not enough!) to achieve aggressive goals:

- Acquire 24K new-to-bank Mortgages, with 10% of those being high ratio mortgage 

- Increase qualified leads growth in marketing response

Just when we thought the COVID-19 situation was recovering, the news of inflation hit Canadians. The real estate market has not been spared with rising interest rates, frequent rates change and home prices higher than ever. The latest data showed home sales sank 47.4 % year-over-year in July 2022, while sales activity was down 24.1% monthly.

Despite this uncertain market, there is a unique group of homebuyers, unlike any other time, who embrace the economic challenges with courage and are not afraid to seize new opportunities. They demand that their financial partners perform up to their standards with flexibility and offer them the most suitable solutions. These new homebuyers were our target.

Amid such an economic environment, in-market home shoppers instinctually want to go to a trusted source for their mortgage – primarily, their existing bank. Our problem: HSBC has less than a 2% share of banked Canadian.

If they don’t pick the bank they already deal with, new buyers will go with the lowest mortgage rate at the time of signing. Year after year, the market is flooded with mortgages message from every financial institution in Canada. In such a crowded and undifferentiated category, competition for leads is tough. 

These insights were instrumental in forming our three-fold strategy and the success of the HSBC mortgage business despite the threats we faced.