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| Financial Services
June 21 2017

HSBC subsidiary hired senior staff with unaccredited degrees

Two senior compliance staff hired by HSBC Saudi Arabia, a subsidiary of the main British bank, lack the accredited bachelor's degree necessary even to apply for an entry-level position at the bank, based on its current hiring guidance.
 
Compliance failings have cost British bank HSBC more than a billion pounds in fines worldwide, despite the fact that HSBC has hired thousands of new compliance staff worldwide.
 
The probe found that Ashraf BinAli, formerly head of regulatory and financial crime compliance at HSBC Saudi Arabia, boasted a business degree from "Kensington University," a bogus institution in California with no official accreditation to operate as a university.
 
Kensington University, an online distance learning provider, no longer exists, having been forced out of business by state regulators in California. It was also banned from operating in Hawaii in 2003.