In 2017, many Vietnamese banks raced to announce huge profits. For the first time, Vietnam had banks reporting profits of up to five digits. Topping the list was Vietcombank (coded VCB) with the profit of 11.018 trillion dong. Representative of Vietcombank said that in 2017, the scale and business efficiency of Vietcombank reached the highest growth rate in 10 recent years. Vietcombank was also the first bank to clear bad debt at the Vietnam Asset Management Company (VAMC) three years ahead of deadline, completing the restructuring phase on bad debt treatment, bringing bad debt to one book.
Ranking the second was VietinBank (coded CTG). The bank’s pre-tax profit was estimated at 9.206 trillion dong, fulfilling 105 percent of the plan set by the annual general meeting.
After Vietcombank and VietinBank, BIDV (coded BID) was the third largest bank in the banking industry with the consolidated pre-tax profit of 8.8 trillion dong, exceeding the target set by the annual general meeting.
Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank, coded VPB) surprisingly rose to an upper level. As a result, VPBank’s consolidated pre- and post-tax profit growth in 2017 was nearly 65 percent, equal to 8.126 trillion dong and 6.438 trillion dong.
Strongly contributing to VPBank’s revenue was still the “golden chicken” from the consumer credit business segment. Revenue from individual consumer segment, consumer finance and small and medium businesses now accounted for nearly 80 percent of VPBank’s total revenue. VPBank’s total consolidated assets as of December 31, 2017 reached 277.750 trillion dong, an increase of 21 percent compared to the end of 2016. With the listing on Hochiminh city stock exchange (STC) and the issuance of individual stocks at the end of the third quarter, VPBank increased chartered capital and equity to 15.706 trillion dong and 29.693 trillion dong respectively, an increase of more than 70 percent compared to 2016.
Temporarily ranking the 5th place was Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (coded MBB). In the separate financial statement of Q4/2017, MBBank’s pre-tax profit reached 5.355 trillion dong, up 44 percent year-on-year. The profit after tax was 4.294 trillion dong, up 44 percent. MBBank’s profit surged thanks to the earning of 615 billion dong after MBBank sold part of its capital from Shinsel Finance Limited (formerly MB) to Shinsei Bank, Limited.
A noticeably rising star is HCM City Development Commercial Joint Stock Bank (HDBank). HDBank announced doubled pre-tax profit from 1.151 trillion dong in 2016 to 2.417 trillion dong in 2017. At present, HDBank owns 51 percent stake of HD Saison, the consumer finance company having the third largest market share in Vietnam with about 3.5 million customers.
According to HDBank’s representative, in five years of 2017-2021, the bank is expected to focus on customer development through Big Data and supply chain financing, with the advantage of large customers in all sectors such as Vietjet, Vinamilk, Saigon Coop, etc., the target of HDBank is to triple the number of customers, reaching 15 million people by 2021; the profit growth rate is about 37 percent per year. On January 5, 2018, over 980 million HDB shares were listed on STC at 33,000 dong per share. HDBank has the market capitalisation of nearly 32.400 trillion dong or equivalent to about $1.43 billion dollars, and enters the top 20 shares with the largest market capitalisation on STC.
Closely following in the “trillion dong profit bank club” was Saigon-Hanoi Joint Stock Commercial Bank (coded SHB) with the pre-tax profit of 1.938 trillion dong, up 66 percent year-on-year compared to 2016 and 11 percent from the set plan.
Saigon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank, coded STB) recently posted the pre-tax profit of over 1.488 trillion dong, 9.5 times higher than 2016 and the bank targets at 1.640 trillion dong for 2018. According to the National Financial Supervisory Commission (NFSC), in 2018, consumer credit may continue achieving high growth and is one of the strategic, potential operating segments of credit institutions.
The year 2017 witnessed a surge in bank shares. Vo Tri Thanh, former vice President of the Central Institute for Economic Management (CIEM), commented, regarding the potential, shares of some banking institutions will become more attractive in the following year thanks to the acceleration of bad debt settlement at ailing banks, and healthilisation of banks under Basel 2 system.
