Re: I feel sorry for
It doesn't matter that the employer is not at fault. HSBC have the paid agreement with the employer not the employee. The employer still has an obligation to it's workforce to sort out this mess.
My employer ran a dummy payroll for emergencies each month in parallel with the normal one and our monthly payslips informed us what our emergency pay would be if this was used. Our pay failed to arrive one month due to a BACS failure but we received our emergency pay the following day paid through a different bank.