I applaud HSBC and Abbey National for not being lemmings on the European push to chip and pin for online banking.  Its actually not just Europe, with some Canadian examples I am familiar with thinking the same way. 

Finextra: HSBC investigates ‘out of band’ authentication for Web users

HSBC and Abbey have so far opted-out of the national banking industry push to supply online account holders with Chip and PIN-style home banking technology. Such systems are considered vulnerable to man-in-middle attacks and require the consumer to carry a personal card reader at all times.