Last month, Zahra Hdidou, senior climate and resilience advisor at ActionAid, described TBIJ's revelation that HSBC had breached its coal policy as "really shocking". "It's disgraceful to see that HSBC yet again violated its own pledge to stop financing companies building new coal plants," she said. "This failure to follow its own policy severely undermines efforts to tackle the climate crisis and undermines the little credibility it has left on climate action." An HSBC spokesperson said: "We follow a clear set of sustainability risk policies which support our ambition to align the financed emissions in our portfolio to net zero by 2050." They said the bank does not comment on client relationships, including whether someone is a client or not. Action Aid said it has now closed the majority of its HSBC accounts in the UK, moving deposits to Lloyds, whose financing more closely aligns with its principles. The charity said it would keep two HSBC accounts open temporarily to avoid disruption to regular donations.