*Banks digitise all operations
At present, many banks have successfully carried out digital banking service such as VCB’s Digital Lab, which improves customers’ experience at the counter; TPBank’s Live Bank; VIB’s MyVIB application aiming at enhancing the experience of customers on electronic transaction channels.
Compared to the common standard of digital banks in the world, we can be see that banks in Vietnam have started with prudent steps. However, it must be acknowledged that these are only the first steps, but commercial banks have been showing a very clear model shift.
In particular, some banks have drastically separated their distribution channels from a standalone branch on digital platform. Their products and services, sales policy are completely independent, they only reuse back-end system of the parent bank like VPBank’s Timo.
Sacombank invested more than 100 billion dong to build a software system for initialising, approving and managing credit (LOS) which is a great step forward for the traditional banking industry.
Phan Dinh Tue, deputy general director cum LOS project director of Sacombank, said that when LOS is applied, all credit approval procedures will be digitised, limiting personal errors.
Similarly, in 2017, Eximbank also announced the “New Eximbank” project on implementing internal restructuring with support from its major partner, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC). The objective of the project is to regain Eximbank’s market leadership in trade finance, strengthening its solutions as well as building a solid customer base including large corporations and FDI. At present, this project of Eximbank has gone half way.
With the rapid development of fintech, many commercial banks said they are looking for ways to move forward, surpassing the leading position in consumer lending of finance companies. Meanwhile, finance companies have also made efforts to maintain their leading position in the consumer lending segment.
Many projects have been financed by commercial banks and fintech companies, as most commercial banks have identified information technology as an important foundation in their operations. That explains why for many years, banks have continually prioritised resources and budgets to invest in the core banking system with the most advanced features or the e-banking system with high safety and security.
With the technical features of payment by touches, by QR codes, etc. in the transition process, many bank leaders expressed the ambition that in the near future, they can draw attention of customers in all segments especially customers that finance consumer companies are serving.
*Will finance companies suffer from pressure?
With the fast and strong investment of commercial banks in the digital context, Dmitry Mosolov, general director of Home Credit Vietnam, said that consumers are changing rapidly through digital interaction. Therefore, the future of consumer finance industry will be in favour of those who know how to convert to online form.
Nevertheless, finance companies always know how to create a solid foundation to balance between growth and risk management, investment and profitability, along with the product diversification.
Dam The Thai, deputy general director of HDSaison, said following the successful implementation of financial applications based on technology, HDSaison now focuses not only on technology development but also on the onset of digital transformation from outside by understanding behaviour, preferences, and consumer choices in digital era.
Indeed, in the current context when commercial banks move forward to digital system, over the last period, finance companies have continuously invested in technology, handling paperwork very quickly to serve customers.
In addition, most consumers now prefer to applying online loans, especially young borrowers. Meanwhile, some business segment still prefers the interaction between person and person in several stages.
In other words, many customers want to find out and apply for online loans but when they reach the final stage, they want to talk to a knowledgeable person to reflect their anxiety if necessary.
It is expected that, in a short time, many finance companies will increase additional features for the application to provide a better customer experience such as providing loans to existing customers without requiring them to go to the points of sale and allowing potential customers to consult thoroughly understand the company’s products before coming to the point of sale.
That is not to mention, some finance companies said they receive thousands of loan applications per day, with the appraisal time in minutes thanks to the “Big Data” system. In many companies, up to 95 percent of customers receive results in just 9-10 minutes.
Their goal is to be able to execute processes with automatically collected data and minimise human intervention to ensure objective factors. All of these changes will bring consumers diverse financial facilities to choose from.
