Worlds That Endure: How HSBC Private Bank’s Ida Liu is rethinking inter-generational wealth

The art of conversation

The first conversation might begin quietly, over a shared meal, through a question about the business or when a younger family member asks what comes next. These can be difficult conversations to have: over half of the entrepreneurs surveyed told HSBC’s GEWR 2026 that they find it difficult discussing money with the next generation. But, given time and the right setting, it can move beyond the mechanics of inheritance to what the family wants to preserve and what it is prepared to let evolve.

Here, Liu often acts as a translator between generations who may speak different financial languages and work within different cultural frameworks. One heir might be drawn to leading the family business, another to investment or philanthropy, while a third may flourish along an independent path. The task is not to make those choices identical but to help the family recognise the value in each. This year’s GEWR data reflects this tension. Two thirds of global founders say it is important for their heirs to “do their own thing” but 60 per cent worry the next generation has “no interest in continuing the family business”.

“We’re always thinking about aligning the values of family members,” she says. “We’re always looking at generational planning. We’re constantly focused on stewardship.” Once that shared purpose is clear, governance, education and succession structures can give it practical form.

A legacy without borders

Even the closest family conversation must now travel across an increasingly borderless world. The GEWR 2026 found that 83 per cent of Hong Kong entrepreneurs spend part of the year in more than one location, while 70 per cent of entrepreneurs globally are considering a move or additional residence abroad. Children often study far from home; businesses, investments and philanthropy can span several jurisdictions. A successful plan must preserve the family’s intent as lives and laws change.

This is where Liu’s personal fluency meets HSBC’s global reach. Through HSBC Private Bank, a family can draw on local understanding and specialists across markets while keeping its private wealth, enterprise and long-term ambitions in view. As those ambitions evolve, the relationship with HSBC can bring in commercial banking, corporate and investment banking, and global markets expertise. This is often crucial when a family is expanding a business, entering a new market, raising capital, managing currency exposure or preparing for a significant transition.

Liu recalls a fifth-generation family supported across Asia and Europe, with some members living in the US and the family company drawing on HSBC’s commercial banking capabilities. The geography was complex; the family story was one. That, for her, is the value of continuity: not a catalogue of services but one relationship able to see the whole picture as people, businesses and ambitions evolve.

As a family’s circumstances evolve, so does the adviser’s role. It may shift from technical counsellor to facilitator and sometimes simply to a patient listener who allows the real question to surface.

Technology can illuminate patterns, sharpen analysis and make complex processes feel seamless. What it cannot do is sense the hesitation behind a decision, reconcile values in tension or earn a family’s confidence year after year. AI might strengthen the adviser’s hand but judgement gives advice wisdom and relationships give it staying power.

Few ideas suit legacy better than the long view. Established in Hong Kong and Singapore in 1946, HSBC Trust and Fiduciary Services marks its 80th anniversary as an integral part of HSBC Private Bank. Over eight decades, its specialists have supported internationally connected families through market cycles, cross-border complexity and defining moments in family life.

That heritage gives Liu and her colleagues a deep well of experience from which to draw. Trust and estate administration, family governance, family office advice and philanthropy can turn deeply held intentions into arrangements built to endure. But no two families share the same history or hopes; the structure must be flexible enough to meet change while remaining faithful to what matters most.

Philanthropy often gives those wishes visible expression. It can create common ground between generations, joining a founder’s experience with the priorities of younger family members. It also offers heirs an early encounter with responsibility: choices must be made, outcomes considered and values translated into action beyond the family itself.

For Liu, stewardship is not about preserving every decision unchanged. It is about preparing the next generation to make thoughtful choices of its own.

That preparation begins with capability before capital: understanding how the wealth was created, discovering individual strengths and gaining enough responsibility to learn what stewardship demands. “This generation doesn’t just want to inherit a legacy,” Liu says. “It wants to author it.” 

Through family discussions, governance advice and learning opportunities, HSBC Private Bank helps heirs understand the family’s journey without requiring them simply to repeat it. The aim is to honour the past while giving the next generation room to write its own chapter.

 Women rewriting wealth 

And as that chapter of family wealth is written, the hands holding the pen are changing too. Liu has watched women move from the margins of wealth conversations to their centre, as founders, inheritors, investors and stewards, deciding not only how capital should be preserved but what it should make possible.

“We are in the midst of the largest wealth transfer in history,” Liu says. As women assume a greater share of decision-making, she sees purpose and impact becoming more prominent in the way families think about investing, succession and responsibility. Women are also the more optimistic: 54 per cent of female entrepreneurs are very positive about their business prospects, according to HSBC’s GEWR 2026, compared with 47 per cent of men.

The result is a broader idea of inheritance, in which enterprise and investment sit alongside education, community, philanthropy and the contribution a family hopes to make.

What endures

In the end, Liu returns to the question beneath every structure, portfolio and family discussion:what will remain when wealth has changed hands? “I hope families will remember the great advice that we gave them—that we were the best help for them in reaching their long-term goals,” she says.

It is a fitting ambition in the 80th year of HSBC Trust and Fiduciary Services. Wealth might cross borders and change hands in a moment. Legacy is made more slowly, in conversations begun before they are urgent, in values given language and in the trust placed in each generation to choose wisely. The true measure of succession is not simply that something valuable survives but that those who inherit it understand why it mattered. Helping families carry that understanding forward into lives not yet imagined is the work that endures.

Disclaimers:

The information contained in this article has not been reviewed in the light of your individual circumstances and is for information purposes only. It does not purport to provide legal, taxation or other advice and should not be taken as such. No client or other reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of the content of this article without seeking specific professional advice. Issued by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited and HSBC Trustee (Hong Kong) Limited.