A two-day Banking Vietnam 2012 Conference and Expo kicked off on May 23, aiming to provide insights on current and future developments of banking technology and present latest high-tech solutions and applications for the industry.

Titled "Technology transformation towards effective banking governance and high quality services", the annual conference is jointly hosted by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and International Data Group (IDG Vietnam).

"It's a good opportunity for banks to improve their current systems, said Le Thanh Tam, CEO of IDG in Vietnam .

Speaking at the event, deputy governor of SBV, Nguyen Toan Thang said that banks with large number of clients are growing rapidly and obtaining high-quality banking services such as electronic payment methods.

By 2015, around 35 percent of the citizens would have access to banking services while cash payments ratios would decrease by about 90 percent.

He said one of the effective solutions to the banking governance is to fulfil the "Strategic Planning for the Banking Industry by 2015" to gradually upgrade banks' infrastructure, human resources and products.

"Most banks in Vietnam have now considerably invested in IT infrastructure which is a favourable factor for them to apply advanced technologies to their business," said Tam.

Ramesh Siva, Service Delivery Manager of Australia 's Sandstone Technology company said: "The banking industry's potential in Vietnam is catching the eyes of many IT and technological enterprises. We are one of them who wants to promote an advanced online- payment application through mobile phones."

The two-day conference will host insightful discussions, introduce up-to-date information technology for banking and share best practices.

The conference on May 24 brought together over 600 VIPS, CIOs , and IT directors from Vietnam 's 35 commercial banks and foreign technological enterprises.-VNA