HDBank was the latest to get approval from the central bank on January 12 to set up five branches in northern and central provinces of Hung Yen, Thai Binh, Thai Nguyen, Vinh Phuc and Dak Nong.The bank will also establish another 39 transaction offices in 26 cities and provinces this year, raising its network to 282 branches and transaction offices nation-wide.
HDBank will open 44 branches and transaction office nationwide this year
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Many other banks such as SCB, Bac A Bank and Ban Viet have also decided to enlarge its network of branches and transaction offices right at the beginning of the year.
Experts said that banks want to enlarge its network as the banking sector is forecast to continuously get a prosperous year in 2018.
According to a State Bank of Vietnam (SBV)’s survey released recently, business performance of commercial banks is forecast to continue its upward trend in 2018 after making significant improvements last year.
Under the survey, 71.8 per cent of the respondents expected better results in Q1 2018 compared with Q4 2017 and 88.6 per cent hoped their business performance this entire year will further improve against last year, of which 29.2 per cent anticipated “significant improvement”.
Up to 92.6 per cent of the correspondents forecast their pre-tax profit in 2018 would rise compared with last year, helping the average growth rate of the entire banking system reach 19.33 per cent, much higher than the 13.4 per cent forecast in a survey conducted at the same time last year.
According to the survey, 85.5 per cent of the correspondents also said their performance in 2017 was better than 2016, of which 31.3 per cent saw a “significant improvement”.
Many banks have so far also reportedly gained high profit last year, helped by strong credit growth and initial gains in the settlement of bad debt.
BIDV was the latest to release a huge pre-tax profit of VND8.8 trillion (US$387.6 million) in 2017, the bank’s highest so far, which has exceeded its plan.
Vietcombank also reported a pre-tax profit of VND11 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 32.9 per cent. This was the first time the local banking system has seen a bank with pre-tax profit exceeding VND10 trillion.
Together with State-owned commercial banks, many other joint stock commercial banks such as Sacombank, OCB, TPBank, LienVietPostBank and VIB have so far also reported to surpass the targets for 2017.
Vice chairwoman of HD Bank Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao said that the bank’s pre-tax profit in 2017 reached VND2.42 trillion, 2.1 times higher than 2016.
The profit growth of banks was helped by strong credit growth, the better-than-hoped settlement of bad debt, effective risk management and the growing real estate market.
A report from the National Financial Supervisory Committee (NFSC) also estimated that the pre-tax profits of the banking sector in 2017 would rise by more than 40 per cent over the previous year, while after-tax profits would surge by 44.5 per cent.
Truong Van Phuoc, NFSC’s acting chairman, said this was thanks to the handling of bad debt, hastened by the National Assembly’s Resolution 42/2014. Some VND70 trillion worth non-performing loans were handled in 2017, up 40 per cent against 2016.
