Banks earn huge services profits

Hanoi, (VNS/VNA) - Many banks have seen their service earnings accelerate, buoyed by increasing investment for the business segment and rising market demands.

Financial statements recently released reveal the total net profit from service activities of 14 listed banks with total assets of more than 100 trillion VND (4.27 billion USD) last year rose by 21 percent compared to the previous year to 24.6 trillion VND (1.05 billion USD).

In the group of large-sized banks, three State-owned banks –Vietcombank, VietinBank and BIDV – led the way in terms of earning profits from services outside credit activities last year.

BIDV was the top earner with 3.550 trillion VND of net profit, up 20 percent compared to 2017. The surge helped BIDV take over the top spot from the country’s largest private bank, Techcombank, which experienced a decline in net service profit in 2018 with only 3.536 trillion VND.

Vietcombank and VietinBank also gained with 3.401 trillion VND and 2.770 trillion VND, up 34 percent and 49 percent, respectively.

However, in terms of growth, the Military Bank came out in top position with a whopping surge of 127 percent to 2.563 trillion VND, which helped the bank rank sixth in the list, up three places against 2017.

In the group of smaller banks, three banks – TPBank, HDBank and LienVietPostBank – also posted earnings from services of more than 100 percent last year. Specifically, the net profit from services of TPBank soared by 310 percent to 676 billion VND while the rising rates of HDBank and LienVietPostBank were 114 percent and 128 percent to 438 billion VND and 148 billion VND, respectively.

According to the banks, besides payment services, insurance services have been also become one of main contributors to the banks’ rising income from the service segment.

Some banks are now recording large proportion of revenue from insurance services, such as VPBank, MB and SHB. The revenue from this activity accounted for 71 percent of SHB’s service revenue, 50 percent of MB’s, and 57 percent of VPBank’s.

For big banks, the revenue from services mainly came from payment services. For example, Vietcombank’s revenue from payment accounted for 66 percent of its total service revenue.

According to experts, banks are investing significantly in services, instead of only focusing on credit activities in the hope of gaining higher profits from the potential segment this year, especially when the central bank committed to tighten credit growth.

With more than 95 million people and sharply increasing consumption, Vietnam is considered an attractive destination for the retail banking segment, which is why banks have strategically planned to boost the segment.

In fact, the in-cash habit of Vietnamese people is no longer an obstacle to the development of card network and non-credit services. Several banks are aiming to give their customers a variety of non-traditional credit services, such as savings and transactional accounts, mortgages, personal loans, debit and credit cards.

In recent years, many banks have considerably improved the quality of their retail banking services to enhance competitiveness. They are also focusing on other aspects such as marketing, technology and human resources to attract more individual customers to non-credit services.

Ngiem Xuan Thanh, Vietcombank Chairman, said services would be key to making a sustained and stable profit for the banking sector this year. The development of non-credit services contributes to diversifying bank’s services, thereby bringing more customers. This type of service will also disperse risks and create higher profits for commercial banks.

According to Tran Du Lich, a member of the National Financial and Monetary Policy Advisory Council, the revenue from fees and retail banking are becoming one of the main income sources of some banks, so the move to invest in retail services is inevitable in the future.

Based on the results gained, leaders of commercial banks said they would continue to apply this business strategy, with a focus on services in the future.-VNS/VNA