BIDV recognised as Best Retail Bank in Vietnam at The Asian Banker Vietnam Country Awards 2019

• BIDV’s commitment to digital transformation drove growth for its retail banking business in 2018
• The industry is gearing for mobile and e-wallet based payments
• Provision of tailored product and services a key imperative among Vietnamese banks

Hanoi, January 10^th 2019- BIDV was awarded Best Retail Bank in Vietnam at The Asian Banker Vietnam Country Awards. 

The award ceremony was held in conjunction with The Future of Finance Vietnam, an annual gathering for senior decision makers in the financial services industry in Vietnam, at the Melia Hotel, Hanoi, on January 10^th 2019.

BIDV’s commitment to digital transformation drove growth for its retail banking business in 2018

Growing its market share of retail deposits to 17%, BIDV continues to grow its customer base at an impressive annual average rate of 11%. With the successful completion of a major retail banking business transformation that has seen it serve over 11.5 million customers today, BIDV was recognised as Best Retail Bank in Vietnam at the Vietnam Country Awards 2019. BIDV continues to digitalise key aspects of its retail banking business with several initiatives launched in 2018. BIDV e-zone, its digital lab which reduced the transaction processing time to 7 minutes from 42 minutes. It is one of the first banks to implement virtual cards, gradually replacing physical cards by co-operating with Samsung Pay for BIDV Samsung Pay. Its SmartBanking offering is also moving towards building an ecosystem and fostering cooperation with fintechs.

The industry is gearing for mobile and e-wallet based payments

Mobile based payments and e-wallets have gained significant traction in Vietnam. Looking for opportunities in a surging mobile payments market, Vietcombank has leveraged AI technology to provide customers with a virtual assistant and help users request transactions through voice recognition as well as text messaging via its mobile app. The bank received the award for Best Mobile Initiative, Application or Programme.

Garnering more than 1.5 million active customers so far, VietinBank’s number of monthly transactions for its mobile payment service grew 60% in 2018. The QR-based payment mode comes entrusted with FingerPrint and FaceID biometric security features, VietinBank won the Best Mobile Payments Service Award at the Vietnam Country Dinner Awards. 

With the largest e-wallet user base in the Vietnamese market, MOMO has been quick to scale up its mobile wallet and payment services via pursuing expansion opportunities in collaboration with 15 top-tier banks, 14 consumer finance institutions & 7 big insurance companies. MOMO was recognised as Digital Wallet of the Year. 

Asia Commercial Bank’s cloud based, sales CRM mobile application has developed on open source and API technology, finds utility among 4500 Relationship Managers serving 3.8 million retail and 250,000 corporate customers to improve their customer services. Asia Commercial Bank was recognised as Best Cloud Based Initiative, Application or Programme. 

Provision of tailored product and services emerged as key imperative among Vietnamese banks

Treatment of customers as ‘individuals’ as opposed to ‘market segment’ along with thousands of other customers emerged as a strong trend. Demand for tailored services have led emergence on non-bank and now increasingly traditional players to realign their products and services to match customer expectations.  

Launched with the purpose of diversifying its deposit portfolio and offering a safe and alternative to customers, Saigon Commercial Bank’s short-term deposit certificate product helped customers maximise returns on their savings and flexibility to manage cash flows. The bank received Deposit Product of the Year Award.

Offering the only credit card product in the market exclusively affiliated to a charity programme, the female oriented credit card contributes to the charitable organisation based on the spending of the cardholder. Carrying a strong and well-intended aspect of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Credit Card Product of the Year was awarded to SeABank for “SeALady”. 

Applying Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology to provide frictionless loan services, FE CREDIT is first in the local market to implement a 100% digital lending process in granting loans for the purchase of digital devices and household appliances. The loan approval is granted within 30 minutes of application. FE CREDIT was awarded the Consumer Finance Product of the Year Award. 

The Asian Banker Vietnam Country Awards Programme refereed by prominent global bankers, IT consultants and academics, is the most prestigious of its kind in Vietnam. Recipients of these awards are honored in a gala event that recognises their efforts in bringing superior products and services to their customers. Astringent and comprehensive evaluation process determines the awardees.

View more images from the Vietnam Country Awards

To know more about the evaluation criteria, awards process kindly visit this page 

For media enquiries, please contact:

Alfred Labiccasi
Marketing Manager
The Asian Banker
Tel: +44 1823 711134
alabiccasi@theasianbanker.com