Guide updated
01 / Business Model Engine
Business model
analysis
The engine identifies activities, customers and reported quantities in public company disclosures. This guide uses HSBC UK examples to explain the analysis and its limits.
Start with the sources and process ↓Analysis process
Analysis workflow
The analysis moves from public sources to evidence-linked descriptions. Identity, reporting scope and the distinction between a statement and an inference are retained throughout.
Data sources
- Identity and reporting scope
- Versioned Bank of England / PRA firm lists and, where available, GLEIF legal-entity records help identify the firm. The source document defines whether its statements cover the bank, subsidiaries or a wider group.
- Company reports
- Annual reports, Pillar 3 reports and relevant sustainability disclosures provide business descriptions, tables and financial context. The example below uses HSBC UK’s 2025 annual report. Source availability varies by firm; search results help locate a document but are not independent proof of its contents.
- Official websites
- Business, product and location pages can add operating detail. Their provider, publication or collection date and reporting period are checked separately. A current webpage does not establish a past-year activity.
How it works
- Collect and scopeResolve the firm and retrieve relevant sources. Retain each document’s entity and reporting perimeter.
- ExtractRead passages and tables for activities, providers, customers, locations and quantities, preserving source references.
- Classify and validateMap descriptions to standard business lines. Check supporting evidence, entity attribution, periods and units; flag unresolved readings.
- Present and reviewLink findings to their passages or table context. Keep inferred classifications and review status separate from reported facts.
Language models assist selected reading and classification tasks; code applies evidence and consistency checks. Some runs use rules alone. These checks do not establish completeness or amount to human approval. How AI is used and checked.
Original sources used in this example · Evidence states and limitations
Technical walkthrough: identity, scope and evidence records
Name + authoritative identifiers
Legal entity + reporting perimeter
Reports + official website material
Original words + source location
Activities + relationships + review
01 · CompanyThe company name is checked against authoritative identifiers before analysis.
Analysis output
A description of the company’s activities and relationships, supported by source passages. Reported quantities retain their units, periods and reporting scope. Uncertain descriptions remain open for review.
Worked example
Reading HSBC UK’s disclosures
The following diagrams interpret real source passages captured for the example. They are worked readings, rather than a replay of every automated extraction step. A saved engine review item is shown under Evidence quality and review.
HSBC UK Bank plc
and its subsidiaries
Selected reported segments →
Personal banking customers
Everyday banking & wealth services
“RBW offers a comprehensive set of banking products and services to support our customers to manage their day-to-day finances, as well as helping to protect and grow their wealth.”
02 / Identity & scope
Company identity
and reporting scope
A report may cover the selected company and its subsidiaries. Its figures must be interpreted at that reporting scope.
Annual Report
and Accounts
HSBC UK Bank plc
Bank and subsidiaries
Year ended 31 December 2025
Read the scope definition ↗The annual report defines “HSBC UK” as the bank and its subsidiaries. The consolidated figures below retain that scope.
Identity checks and source ownership
The example identifies HSBC UK Bank plc with LEI 21380081EP12LC86CB82 and FRN 765112. The engine distinguishes the legal entity, a parent group, a brand and a website domain. A name match or shared brand does not independently verify a company. Materials must retain their own reporting scope.
03 / Evidence to model
Extracting activities
and relationships
The Private Bank passage identifies the business, its customers and its services. Each extracted relationship links to the original text.
Private Bank: passage analysis
Annual report · Private Bank
“PB supports high-net worth individuals and families with their personal wealth needs, offering investment and lending opportunities, alongside wealth planning solutions and banking services.”
PDF page 5
View the complete supporting passage ↗
01 / Identify the business named in the passage.
Scroll through the example or select a step.
Inside an activity / Asset finance
Asset-finance
contract terms
Compare asset use, payments and ownership under a finance lease and hire purchase.
borrowerEquipment / capital expenditure
Legal ownership cannot pass to the borrower.
Supporting passages
Read the full passages ↗
HSBC asset-finance webpage · period unspecified
Evidence limitsPayment flows alone do not establish profit.
Scroll through the relationships or select a passage.
Scope, interpretation and the two contracts
This example interprets an official product page; it does not represent an observed transaction. The page names HSBC Equipment Finance (UK) Ltd as provider. These product relationships are not attributed to HSBC UK Bank plc as a standalone legal entity. Website evidence has no specified reporting period.
Finance lease: regular rentals, uninterrupted asset use and no transfer of legal ownership (passages 14–16). Hire purchase: regular repayments with an end-of-agreement purchase option, subject to compliance with the agreement. The two aligned columns describe the contractual exchange; they encode no amount, frequency, income allocation or profit.
Funding sources, interest and fee components, and third-party cost allocations are not established by these selected passages. The equipment illustration represents an asset class, not a disclosed asset owned by a named customer.
How a description becomes a business model unit
- Retail Banking & Wealth
- Commercial Banking
- Private Bank
Reported segments, retained as the firm describes them.
- Deposit taking
- Residential mortgage
- Asset finance & leasing
Selected activities described in the sources. No automatic one-to-one allocation to segments.
A unit brings together supported activities, offerings, customers and economic mechanisms. A product name alone does not establish a distinct business. A parent–child relationship needs evidence; organisational segments and activity classifications are different axes.
Observed facts, inferred relationships and ontology mappings retain different evidence statuses. Review status is recorded separately. Company-level mechanisms stay at company scope unless the evidence supports allocation.
04 / Exposure & quantities
Reported quantities
and financial context
The engine records extracted measures with their units, periods and reporting scope. It does not estimate financial allocations from product descriptions.
From the report row to the comparison
- Source. Annual report, PDF page 14: net operating income / (expense), before credit impairment charges. Read the row together with its segment headers.
- Extracted content. £m, year ended 31 December 2025: 4,740; 5,315; 162; 275; and (24). Parentheses mean a negative value.
- Checks. Retain the bank-and-subsidiaries scope and the report’s inter-segment allocations. The five values add to the disclosed total: 4,740 + 5,315 + 162 + 275 − 24 = 10,468.
- Result. Compare £10,468m of reported income by segment. This worked reading of the captured report row is not an exposure allocation or an estimate of profit.
Segment income comparison
Actual report values · £mNet operating income / (expense)
Before change in expected credit losses and other credit impairment charges
Year ended 31 December 2025 · £m
| Reported segment | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Retail Banking and Wealth | 4,740 |
| Commercial Banking | 5,315 |
| Corporate and Institutional Banking | 162 |
| Private Bank | 275 |
| Corporate Centre | (24) |
| Total | 10,468 |
Selected row transposed for reading. Figures include inter-segment allocations.
View the source text and headers ↗
01 / Identify the measure and its exclusions.
All five values sum to the disclosed total. Corporate Centre is negative; the comparison retains its sign. This is reported income, not a portfolio exposure or an engine-estimated allocation.
Operating geography
Locations named in the report
Qualitative statementRead the passage ↗
Business dependencies
Company-level service dependencies
Company-level statement
No product-level split is disclosed in this passage.
A disclosed location can be matched to physical hazard data. This does not calculate financial loss.
Location matching example ↗05 / Review & uncertainty
Evidence quality
and review
Evidence is reviewed for direct support, reporting scope and unresolved questions.
Status labels and colour
Read the label with its colour. In the workbench’s run status, green means completed or verified; amber means partial, provisional or review required, and also marks work in progress; red means failed or rejected. A register-only record has a neutral status. Completion or verification can come from automated checks and does not imply human approval.
For claim confidence, green is “Well evidenced”, amber is “Partly evidenced”, red is “Thinly evidenced”, and neutral is “Not assessed”. These describe evidence support. Hazard colours and company-comparison colours have their own legends; a green evidence label does not mean low climate risk.
What a gap or qualification means
- Not disclosed
- The reviewed source does not provide the required amount or breakdown. Separate country and sector totals do not establish a country–sector amount; that intersection remains not disclosed.
- No supporting evidence found
- The acquired and searched material does not support the finding. This is a statement about coverage, not proof that the firm does not conduct that business.
- Reported zero
- An explicit zero belongs to a specified measure, scope and period. A blank or dash is not automatically zero; use the source’s stated convention. Missing tables and failed extractions remain gaps.
- Inferred or calculated
- A classification or relationship inferred from a passage is distinct from the firm’s wording. Arithmetic derived from disclosed numbers must retain its inputs and method; it does not create a missing financial allocation.
Activities and the framework. The classification framework lists possible business lines. Evidence supports only the activities identified in the reviewed material. Unreported lines are not confirmed absences.
Climate relevance. A business can be climate-relevant through physical or transition channels without being carbon-intensive. The methodology distinguishes eight climate-relevance comparison groups from transition-risk tiers. Comparisons must use one source table at a time, retaining its entity, period, measure and denominator. Only clearly identified industries should be assigned; mixed headings and unexplained residuals should remain unallocated without splitting their amounts. Missing categories are not reported zeros. “Other (less climate relevant)” retains named remaining industries for comparison; it does not establish low risk or low financed emissions.
Address attribution. Interpreting a location requires evidence of whose address the source describes and whether it is an operating site, a registered address, or unresolved. Subsidiary tables require the entity and address to match in the original source layout. A subsidiary address does not establish the selected bank’s own branch or locate its lending exposures. If the source says “registered office or principal place of business”, that distinction remains unresolved.
Confidence and coverage. Confidence levels describe the strength of evidence with reasons; they are not probabilities. The dimension-coverage summary checks whether at least one object was extracted in each dimension, so even 100% does not establish a complete business model or source collection. Neither measure is a financial risk score.
A saved result that still needs review
The captured HSBC UK run contains a life-insurance candidate flagged for single-passage support. Its evidence is an official money-advice article discussing a customer’s insurance, with no reporting period specified. The saved review item is a reason to investigate; the passage does not establish that the bank underwrites life insurance.
“PB supports high-net worth individuals and families with their personal wealth needs, offering investment and lending opportunities, alongside wealth planning solutions and banking services.”
The passage explicitly connects a named business with customers and services. It supports these relationships; it does not quantify their revenue.
Inspect the complete passage ↗Evidence classification
Observed facts, inferred links and vocabulary mappings retain their evidence type.
Missing evidence
A search may find no evidence for an activity, dependency or exposure; this does not establish its absence.
Professional review
Review items support investigation. They are not a supervisory judgement or a risk score.
How to read these examples
The Private Bank example shows direct textual support. The life-insurance example shows why a mention needs further checking. The report definition shows how the meaning of “group” must be checked before interpreting a figure. These examples illustrate different evidence questions; they are not a current company assessment.
06 / Sources & verification
Sources and
verification
The passages below support the examples in this guide and link to the original documents.
2025Period + scope + page
web pagesSource + snapshot
Period may be unspecified
Reports and
official websites
Report figures refer to the stated financial year. Website material is dated separately and may change after the example is prepared.
Examples prepared on 20 September 2026; they are explanations of the method, not a current assessment of the company.
Asset finance · contract mechanics and named provider
Website evidence · reporting period unspecified · HSBC source page ↗
Asset Finance, also known as Equipment Finance, is available to businesses planning significant annual capital expenditure.
A way of funding capital expenditure on tangible, moveable assets, using the asset as the primary source of security. Funding terms and products are structured around the working life of the asset being funded.
Allows the borrower to obtain legal ownership of the asset at the end of the agreement, by exercising an option to purchase having complied with the terms of the agreement.
Hire Purchase is a way of spreading the cost of capital investments for your business – with straightforward documentation and regular repayments. You can acquire ownership of the assets at the end of the agreement.
Leasing agreements enable the borrower to spread the cost and VAT of an asset through regular rentals under a finance agreement, easing cash flow.
Throughout the term of the finance agreement, which generally extends beyond the duration of a standard Hire Purchase agreement to align with the asset’s useful life, VAT is applied to each rental rather than being due in full upfront
The borrower enjoys uninterrupted use of the asset throughout the funding period, although legal ownership of the asset cannot actually pass to the borrower.
Asset Finance is provided by HSBC Equipment Finance (UK) Ltd.
Passages used in the visuals
Scope definition
PDF page 3
This document comprises the Annual Report and Accounts 2025 for HSBC UK Bank plc (‘the bank’ or 'the Company') and its subsidiaries (together ‘HSBC UK’ or ‘the group’). ’We’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ refer to HSBC UK Bank plc together with its subsidiaries. It contains the Strategic report, the Report of the Directors, the Statement of Directors’ Responsibilities and Financial Statements, together with the Independent Auditors’ Report, as required by the UK Companies Act 2006. References to ‘HSBC Group’ or ‘the Group’ within this document mean HSBC Holdings plc together with its subsidiaries. A full list of abbreviations is provided on page 124.HSBC UK annual filing · FCA NSM archive (ZIP) ↗
Customers and offerings
PDF page 5
Retail Banking and Wealth RBW offers a comprehensive set of banking products and services to support our customers to manage their day-to-day finances, as well as helping to protect and grow their wealth. We serve over 14.7 million customers under our three brands: HSBC UK, first direct and Marks and Spencer Financial Services plc (’MSFS’). Private Bank PB supports high-net worth individuals and families with their personal wealth needs, offering investment and lending opportunities, alongside wealth planning solutions and banking services. We strategically partner with our clients to deliver tailored solutions based on their needs, leveraging the HSBC Group’s global capabilities and reach, serving over 3,800 client relationships.
PDF page 5
CMB is a full-service domestic and international commercial bank, highly connected to the HSBC Group. We serve over 690,000 clients, from start-up stage through to mid-market and up to listed corporates. HSBC Innovation Bank Limited (‘HINV’) is part of our CMB business. Corporate and Institutional Banking CIB offers foreign currency payments and selected products to enable commercial hedging, as permitted under UK ring-fencing legislation. Through close collaboration with the HSBC Group, we also make products that are not offered within HSBC UK available on an arms-length basis. Corporate Centre Corporate Centre supports the central operations of the HSBC UK business and includes interests in a joint venture and stewardship costs.HSBC UK annual filing · FCA NSM archive (ZIP) ↗
Segment income: headers and values
PDF page 14
Global businesses are our reportable segments under IFRS 8. The HSBC Group Chief Executive, supported by the rest of the Group Operating Committee, is considered the Chief Operating Decision Maker ('CODM') for the purposes of identifying the HSBC Group's, and therefore HSBC UK's, reportable segments. HSBC UK's CODM is the HSBC UK Chief Executive, supported by the HSBC UK Operating Committee. Our operations are closely integrated and, accordingly, the presentation of data includes internal allocations of certain items of income and expense. These allocations include the costs of certain support services and global functions to the extent that they can be meaningfully attributed to global businesses.
PDF page 14
While such allocations have been made on a systematic and consistent basis, they necessarily involve a degree of subjectivity. Costs which are not allocated to global businesses are included in Corporate Centre. Where relevant, income and expense amounts presented include the results of inter-segment funding along with inter-company and inter- business line transactions. All such transactions are undertaken on arm’s length terms. The intra- group elimination items are presented in the Corporate Centre. A description of the global businesses is provided in the Strategic report, page 3. Reported profit before tax and balance sheet data for the year ended
PDF page 14
At 31 Dec 2025
PDF page 14
Retail Banking and Wealth Commercial Banking Corporate and Institutional Banking Private Bank Corporate Centre Total
PDF page 14
£m £m £m £m £m £m Net operating income/(expense) before change in expected credit losses and other credit impairment charges 4,740 5,315 162 275 (24) 10,468HSBC UK annual filing · FCA NSM archive (ZIP) ↗
Operating geography
PDF page 70
HSBC UK Bank plc is a member of the HSBC Group, the ultimate parent company of which is HSBC Holdings plc. HSBC UK Bank plc operates in the United Kingdom.HSBC UK annual filing · FCA NSM archive (ZIP) ↗
Company-level dependencies
PDF page 23
We use third party providers for a range of goods and services and it is critical that we seek to ensure we have appropriate risk management policies, processes and practices over the selection, governance, and oversight of our third party providers and their supply chain, particularly for key activities that could affect our operational resilience. Any deficiency in the management of risks associated with our third parties could affect our ability to support our customers and meet regulatory expectations.HSBC UK annual filing · FCA NSM archive (ZIP) ↗
Life-insurance mention: an advice article
Talking to loved ones about financial arrangements after you pass away is not something anyone wants to do. But it’s really important to be open and practical. From discussing how much life insurance you have (or may need) , to where your will is kept.
Reporting period unspecified. The life-insurance description rests on a single passage and needs further corroboration.
Read the HSBC UK article ↗Sources used in this guide
The annual report supports the business and financial examples. Website material is identified separately and is not automatically evidence about the 2025 reporting period.
| Document | Data source | Period | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual Report and Accounts 2025 | HSBC UK · FCA annual filing (ZIP) | 2025 | Reporting scope, businesses, income, geography and dependencies. PDF pages 3, 5, 14, 23 and 70. |
| Asset Finance | HSBC UK Commercial Banking | Not specified | Finance lease and hire purchase; the named provider is HSBC Equipment Finance (UK) Ltd. |
| How to talk about money | HSBC UK | Not specified | Why a mention of life insurance in an advice article does not establish underwriting activity. |
What this method can and cannot establish
Official registers help establish identity. Company reports and official websites support business descriptions; their scope and reporting dates must be checked separately. A website’s publication or collection date does not make it evidence about the report year.
A supported description is not a measure of financial materiality. Income is not profit, and company-wide dependencies are not automatically attributable to every business line. Inferred classifications remain distinguishable from the company’s own statements.
Missing evidence remains a gap. Further review can be required even when an analysis is complete; the result is neither a supervisory judgement nor a risk score.