I think it’s more of a case that Lloyds are unusual in capping their SIPP fees at £16.50 per month maximum.
Remember with these that the fees don’t come from the investments, you have to pay them from uninvested cash, so that can make quite a difference depending on your pot size. Anything over about £80k stops at £16.50 per month with Lloyds, but with HSBC it continues to increase as it’s not capped like that.
is it easy to get a premier account? do they do a tough check to ensure you’re eligible?
I see posts on Reddit people just turning over £5,100 a month and being offered the premier upgrade in the app.
Is it just offered? I’ve not been allowed a HSBC account for years so no idea how their upgrades work; bank account 
advance premier
With Advance offering basically nothing extra
I haven’t ever looked into them TBH.
Yeah it can be if your turnover is enough, from bank account to premier
Seems to be a bit random, here’s how it went for me:
I stopped at stage 1, I couldn’t be bothered with the faffing for a Premier account that gives me a lot less benefit than the Lloyds Premier account.
You get access to the better credit cards but even with those and the Premier account you still get stung for overseas fees. I stuck with Lloyds.
Forget going to branch. It’s 2026
My experience was similar but didn’t need to go to the branch. I called to talk about upgrading the account, booked a time for a longer call and was upgraded during the call. No need to go to the branch.
Ugh. Just tell me online if I can upgrade.
I’d guess that’s one of the changes coming this year out of the 50 odd the annual report mentioned. Nobody wants to go to branch, that’s why they’re closing them.
I had that as well - about 30mins of the call was just the CS chap monotonously reading out the T&Cs. Hard check during the call for an existing account too 
They really love the hard checks.
there’s one for talking about it.
A lot less? The only differences that I can see are that Lloyds gives you 1% cashback on their debit card and the same lifestyle benefits that you get with Club Lloyds, unless I’ve missed something. HSBC has travel insurance, timely notifications with sound/vibrate and shows upcoming DD and BACS transactions.
Also, the big plus for me is that it’s not Lloyds 
The bare minimum all banks should achieve. 
I thought HSBC was actively downgrading customers who didn’t meet the criteria. Perhaps they’ve lost more than they wanted to see go, and now are offering upgrades to those with account turnover above £5.1k!
Well, for me at least, this works out better than a Lloyds Premier account:
I know a couple of those come with Club Lloyds, but we’re not comparing against Club Lloyds, we’re comparing against HSBC.
I get what you’re saying about Lloyds, but they really seem to be improving, especially on a few calls and callbacks I’ve had with them when transferring some stuff.
I didn’t know this was a thing.