Vietnam’s digital transformation journey – rethinking disruption in a hyper-connected world

Despite forecasts stating growth in Vietnam’s GDP for the year 2021, the country posted a modest GDP growth of just 1.42% in the first nine months of this year according to its General Statistics Office. Due to severe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Assembly of Vietnam is targeting a GDP growth of between 6% and 6.5% in 2022. Financial institutions (FIs) in Vietnam have been digitising rapidly in an increasingly complex environment. The favourable economic climate has also fostered the emergence of the digital economy and an expanding start-up ecosystem. Digital-only banks are using advanced digital channels to deliver highly personalised experiences at scale. Platform firms are bringing more value to customers by focusing on addressing customer demands and unbundling traditional value chains to forge new business models. Hence, FIs have significantly enhanced their base of digitalisation. These efforts are manifested through upgraded frontend digital delivery and optimised processes. This has resulted in changes to backend operations, infrastructure, technology, and underlying business models to remain competitive. Moreover, incumbents are leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), application programming interface (APIs), and robotic process automation (RPA) to thrive and survive in a competitive environment. Further, utilising the power of cloud to deploy new applications or migrating existing business-critical ones enables operational resilience, delivers personalised engagement, and accelerates innovation-led growth. Digital transformation has the potential to allow Vietnamese banks to capture a larger amount of data from an increasingly high number of sources. Utilising this data serves both decision-making and the customers. It also enables the banks to reduce costs while growing operational efficiency and revenue. This will be generated through innovation in products, services, and distribution channels thus enhancing customer experience. Accordingly, FIs must identify the gaps and fulfil it by adopting a holistic transformation inside out to gain a competitive advantage and to capture a larger market share. The Asian Banker’s Finance Vietnam 2022 is the leading annual event for fostering sustainable innovation not only among financial institutions but also disruptors and related players. The programme has been designed for senior executives from banks, financial institutions, fintech and large technology companies to come together for a day of intense discussions on the current trends that are reshaping the financial services industry in Vietnam.