Banking & Finance

The Asia Commercial Bank (ACB) has received an award as the “Listed company with the best investor relations (IR) in 2022”. The award honors businesses that have contributed to building a transparent and fair stock market and aims to maximize the value of listed companies through effective IR activities.

Liquidity pressure is increasing in Vietnam’s banking system. The maturity of USD sales contracts caused a corresponding amount of VND to be withdrawn, pushing up the interbank interest rate. In September, savings interest rates were raised to a new high at many banks, the highest being 8.8 per cent per annum at ABBank. The bank said requirements include deposits being at least VND1.5 trillion ($63.23 million) on a 13-month term, with interest received at the end of the period.

Moody’s has upgraded TPBank’s credit rating to “Ba3”, based on assessing five key criteria: liquidity, profitability, bad debt ratio, equity, and tangible asset financing. Four of the five are at a high level at TPBank. With good profitability and risk management, TPBank was also placed by Forbes in the Top 50 best-listed companies in 2022 and is among the top seven listed banks in Vietnam.

With support from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Qualcomm Vietnam Innovation Challenge (QVIC) 2022 contest was held by Qualcomm to promote innovation in the local startup ecosystem by supporting tech companies with potential in key sectors. The top 3 startups were announced on September 14, which will receive total prizes of $200,000.

According to the ACB Securities Company (ACBS), the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) sold some $21 billion of foreign exchange reserves in the first eight months of this year, or 19 per cent of the total. Reserves now stand at $89 billion, or about 12 weeks’ worth of imports, which is still within a safe margin. ACBS expects it will be difficult for the SBV to maintain low interbank interest rates in the near future, because the US Fed is likely to introduce three more rate hikes from now to the end of the year, putting downwards pressure on the VND/USD exchange rate.

In the week from September 5-9, the interbank interest rate spiked to 7.5 per cent per annum at one point, the highest level since 2012, but then fell to 4.29 per cent thanks to regulating activities by the State Bank of Vietnam, helping to gradually stabilize system liquidity.