---
title: "HSBC: the 360 check | Agent Ready Checklist"
description: "HSBC on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 48 of 100, grade C. 5 of 21 checklist rows met, 13 not met. One company a day."
canonical: https://agentreadychecklist.com/blog/hsbc-agent-readiness
site: "Agent Ready Checklist"
last_updated: 2026-11-09
date: 2026-11-09
section: "360 checks"
---

# HSBC: the 360 check | Agent Ready Checklist

> HSBC on Ora's agent-readiness scan, read 2026-11-09: 48 of 100, grade C. 5 of 21 checklist rows met, 13 not met. One company a day.

Source: https://agentreadychecklist.com/blog/hsbc-agent-readiness
Site: Agent Ready Checklist
Last reviewed: 2026-11-09
Agent endpoints: https://agentreadychecklist.com/llms.txt (index), https://agentreadychecklist.com/openapi.json (API), https://agentreadychecklist.com/mcp (MCP server), https://agentreadychecklist.com/ask (search)
Access: https://agentreadychecklist.com/auth.md (no key). Pricing: https://agentreadychecklist.com/pricing.md (free).

# HSBC against the checklist: the 360 agent-readiness check

360 check, 9 November 2026. HSBC is Europe's largest bank by assets, headquartered in London.

HSBC scores 48 of 100 on Ora's agent-readiness scan, a C, read 9 November 2026. At the door, site accessible to 6 AI agent user-agents. 5 of the 21 checklist rows with an Ora check are met. A documented API and a sitemap that does not parse: hard parts done, easy ones not.

On 9 November 2026 the public site at hsbc.com scored **48 of 100** on [Ora's](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadychecklist.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) agent-readiness scan, a C. Ora probes a site the way an agent would: it requests pages with the agents' own user agents, reads robots.txt, looks for the files agents read, and tries the API, MCP and payment surfaces. Below, each of the 31 checklist rows is read against the Ora checks the [crosswalk](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ora-checks/) names for it, so the result says which requirements this company meets, not only how many points it scored. Ora's one-line summary: HSBC offers developer resource discoverability, but lacks an OpenAPI specification.

## The score

| Layer | Points | Share | What the layer asks |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Discovery | 12 of 13 | 92% | Can agents find and recommend it |
| Access | 24 of 56 | 43% | Can agents read it |
| Usability | 18 of 62 | 29% | Can agents use it |
| Payments | 0 of 0 | none apply | Can agents pay |
| Total | 48 of 100 | 48% | Grade C |

## Row by row

A row is met when every Ora check the crosswalk names for it passes, not met when every one fails, and partly when the checks disagree or one is partial. A row with no Ora check in the catalogue, or whose checks did not apply to this site, is marked as such; the [Verify Kit](https://agentreadychecklist.com/kit/) tests those by hand.

| Row | Level | Result | Ora checks, and what Ora saw |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AR-FIND-01; Do not block agents | MUST | Met | robots.txt AI crawler policy (pass), robots.txt agent-user policy (pass), Agent crawler reachability (pass), Not blocked by bot detection (pass).; Training: 2/2. Search: 3/3 page/crawler pairs permitted. No applicable crawl or usage restriction found for 5 training and search crawlers (gptbot, claudebot, oai-searchbot, claude-searchbot, |
| AR-FIND-02; Answers on one first-party page | SHOULD | No Ora check | No check in Ora's catalogue names this row. |
| AR-FIND-03; Sitemap listed in robots.txt | SHOULD | Partly | Sitemap exists (partial).; Sitemap found at /sitemap.xml but XML parsing failed |
| AR-FIND-04; AI Catalog at .well-known | MAY | Not met | AI Catalog discovery (not applicable), ARD discovery (fail).; No /.well-known/ard.json (and no legacy /.well-known/ai-catalog.json) |
| AR-READ-01; Answer in the initial HTML | MUST | Partly | Content without JavaScript (partial).; 5410 chars with H1, but first content heading is H2, not H1 |
| AR-READ-02; Real HTTP status codes | MUST | Met | Redirect hygiene (pass).; Redirect hygiene: pass, 1 of 1. |
| AR-READ-03; Home page with real links | SHOULD | Met | Public API/docs linked from homepage (pass).; Documentation site found at https://developer.hsbc.com |
| AR-READ-04; Docs that answer agent tasks | SHOULD | No Ora check | No check in Ora's catalogue names this row. |
| AR-READ-05; Fenced, language-tagged code | SHOULD | No Ora check | Code fence validity (not applicable). |
| AR-READ-06; Link the discovery files | SHOULD | No Ora check | No check in Ora's catalogue names this row. |
| AR-READ-07; Ship llms.txt | SHOULD | Not met | llms.txt exists (fail), llms.txt formatting (fail), llms.txt links resolve (not applicable).; No llms.txt found at /llms.txt or /.well-known/llms.txt. |
| AR-READ-08; JSON-LD on key pages | SHOULD | Partly | JSON-LD structured data (partial).; JSON-LD found (1 block(s)) but no identity type - use SoftwareApplication, Product, Organization, Person, or Article so agents can tell what this site is |
| AR-READ-09; Advertise a markdown mirror | MAY | Not met | Markdown alternate link (fail).; No sampled page advertises a markdown alternate. Add <link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown" href="..."> (or the equivalent Link response header) pointing at a markdown twin of the page. |
| AR-READ-11; Pricing as first-party HTML | SHOULD | Not met | Pricing info accessible (fail).; No pricing page or pricing data found |
| AR-ACT-01; Auth an agent can finish | SHOULD | Not met | OAuth 2.0 support (fail), Scoped permissions (fail).; No OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect support detected |
| AR-ACT-02; OpenAPI contract | SHOULD | Not met | OpenAPI spec published (fail).; No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found |
| AR-ACT-03; MCP over Streamable HTTP | SHOULD | Not met | MCP server / manifest (fail), Listed in MCP registries (not applicable), MCP PKCE S256 support (not applicable), MCP OAuth metadata (not applicable).; No MCP server or manifest found |
| AR-ACT-04; MCP server card | MAY | Not met | MCP server-card.json (fail).; No MCP server card found (checked /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json, the site's ai-catalog.json, servers[].card in mcp.json, and <server>/server-card) |
| AR-ACT-05; MCP Apps view | MAY | No Ora check | MCP Apps support (not applicable). |
| AR-ACT-06; SDKs and a CLI | SHOULD | No Ora check | CLI tool available (not applicable), Multi-language SDK packages (not applicable), NPM/PyPI SDK package (not applicable). |
| AR-ACT-07; WebMCP tools | SHOULD | Not met | WebMCP support (fail).; No WebMCP support detected - no tool-attribute forms and no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found (scanned 3 of 3 same-origin script bundle(s) for modelContext registrations) |
| AR-ACT-08; Agent payments | MAY | No Ora check | x402 payment protocol (not applicable), MPP payment protocol (not applicable), UCP - Universal Commerce Protocol (not applicable), ACP - Agentic Commerce Protocol (not applicable), ACP delegate payment (not applicable). |
| AR-ACT-09; NLWeb /ask endpoint | MAY | Met | NLWeb /ask endpoint (pass).; NLWeb /ask endpoint exists but requires authentication (HTTP 403, via POST) |
| AR-ACT-10; An MCP server or a CLI | MUST | Not met | MCP server / manifest (fail), CLI tool available (not applicable).; No MCP server or manifest found |
| CF-CONTENT-SIGNALS; Content-Signal line | cloudflare | No Ora check | No check in Ora's catalogue names this row. |
| CF-MARKDOWN-NEGOTIATION; Markdown by Accept | cloudflare | Not met | Markdown content negotiation (acceptmarkdown.com) (fail), Markdown agent docs (fail).; Homepage https://hsbc.com does not meet the Markdown negotiation requirements: Accept: text/markdown returned text/html; Vary header missing Accept (got "none") |
| CF-PAY-PER-CRAWL; Pay per crawl, HTTP 402 | cloudflare | No Ora check | No check in Ora's catalogue names this row. |
| CF-OAUTH-DISCOVERY; OAuth discovery files | cloudflare | Not met | OAuth Protected Resource metadata (RFC 9728) (fail).; No /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource found (RFC 9728) |
| CF-AGENT-SKILLS; Agent Skills index | cloudflare | No Ora check | Agent Skills index conformance (v0.2.0) (not applicable). |
| VERCEL-NEGOTIATION-HEADERS; Markdown headers | vercel | Not met | Markdown content negotiation (acceptmarkdown.com) (fail).; Homepage https://hsbc.com does not meet the Markdown negotiation requirements: Accept: text/markdown returned text/html; Vary header missing Accept (got "none") |
| VERCEL-ROBOTS-EXCLUSIONS; Robots exclusions | vercel | Met | robots.txt AI crawler policy (pass), robots.txt agent-user policy (pass).; Training: 2/2. Search: 3/3 page/crawler pairs permitted. No applicable crawl or usage restriction found for 5 training and search crawlers (gptbot, claudebot, oai-searchbot, claude-searchbot, |

## The fixes worth most points

Ora attaches an estimate to each failing or partial check: how many points the site would gain by passing it. These are the 5 with the largest estimates for HSBC, each tied to the checklist row whose recipes cover it.

MCP server / manifest

Fail, 0 of 6, about 4.3 points to gain. Ora saw: No MCP server or manifest found. Row [AR-ACT-03](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-act-03/), MCP over Streamable HTTP.

OpenAPI spec published

Fail, 0 of 7, about 4.2 points to gain. Ora saw: No OpenAPI/Swagger specification found. Row [AR-ACT-02](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-act-02/), OpenAPI contract.

OAuth 2.0 support

Fail, 0 of 5, about 3.6 points to gain. Ora saw: No OAuth 2.0 or OpenID Connect support detected. Row [AR-ACT-01](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-act-01/), Auth an agent can finish.

Scoped permissions

Fail, 0 of 5, about 3.6 points to gain. Ora saw: No declared OAuth scopes, security schemes, or scoped-permission documentation found. Row [AR-ACT-01](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-act-01/), Auth an agent can finish.

WebMCP support

Fail, 0 of 5, about 3.6 points to gain. Ora saw: No WebMCP support detected - no tool-attribute forms and no document.modelContext / navigator.modelContext usage found (scanned 3 of 3 same-origin script bundle(s) for modelContext registrations). Row [AR-ACT-07](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ar-act-07/), WebMCP tools.

## Our read

HSBC opens the door and documents an API, then loses the checklist on the files. All six agent user agents Ora sent reached hsbc.com, robots.txt allows the training and search crawlers, five of five sampled pages read without a login, and the home page gives 5,410 characters with an H1, though its first heading is an H2. developer.hsbc.com is a real portal and Ora found a GraphQL endpoint, but no OpenAPI specification describes the API, OAuth discovery endpoints are absent, and the SDKs the portal mentions at develop.hsbc.com/hsbc-sdk are in no public registry. On the Access side the sitemap at /sitemap.xml exists but did not parse as XML, the JSON-LD has no identity type, and there is no llms.txt. Europe's largest bank by assets has the hard parts in place and is failing the checks that a build step would catch.

## Verify your own site

The scan above is free and needs no account: enter a domain at [ora.ai](https://ora.ai/?utm_source=agentreadychecklist.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check) and read the same four layers for your own site, then take each failing row to its recipe on this site. The command below runs the same audit from a terminal and exits with 1 under the score you set, so it can gate a deploy. Payments did not apply to this company; a site that sells is read on that layer too. [Why Ora, and its limits](https://agentreadychecklist.com/verify-with-ora/).

```bash
npx ax@0.10 audit https://example.com --min-score 70
```

[All 360 checks](https://agentreadychecklist.com/blog/), one company a day. Corrections to [the corrections page](https://agentreadychecklist.com/corrections/).

## Sources

-   [ora.ai/api/score/hsbc.com, Ora's scan (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/score/hsbc.com?utm_source=agentreadychecklist.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)read 2026-11-09
-   [ora.ai/api/checks, contract 1.38.0 (vendor)](https://ora.ai/api/checks?utm_source=agentreadychecklist.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=check)read 2026-11-05
-   [hsbc.com, the company's site](https://www.hsbc.com/)read 2026-11-09

Edition

Data

2026-11-04

Reviewed

2026-11-05

Spec

AgentReady v2.0, 273d2d7

Crawl

13,071 rows, 2026-11-04

Ora

132 checks, contract 1.38.0, 2026-11-05

Verify with Ora

The scanner this site recommends for the whole checklist. 132 checks, a score out of 100, no account.

`npx ax@0.10 audit <url> --min-score <n>`

[Why Ora, and its limits](https://agentreadychecklist.com/verify-with-ora/)

Method

-   [How rows, commands and rates are made](https://agentreadychecklist.com/method/)
-   [How an Ora check is matched to a row](https://agentreadychecklist.com/checklist/ora-checks/)
-   [Pass rates by rank band](https://agentreadychecklist.com/data/by-rank/)

Sources and read dates sit at the foot of the page.

Last reviewed 2026-11-09. AgentReady v2.0, read 2026-11-04.