Strengthening security and safety in banking operations

The conference was chaired by SBV Governor Le Minh Hung, Senior Lieutenant General Bui Van Nam – Deputy Minister of Public Security Ministry, SBV Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu and SBV Deputy Governor Nguyen Kim Anh.

Attending the meeting were representatives of central agencies, representatives of relating ministries, industries, entities from ;Public Security Ministry and Heads of SBV departments, leaders of credit institutions, Directors of major branches of commercial banks, etc. The e-conference was connected with 63 SBV branches of the country.

Delivering the keynote opening speech, Governor Le Minh Hung stated that, in the recent years, the banking industry has actively conducted orientation and guidelines of the Communist Party of Vietnam, policies and laws on restructuring the system of credit institutions in association with bad debt resolution. As a result, system of credit institutions, branches of foreign banks has achieved positive progresses with safer and more effective operations; the disciplines and compliance of banking industry have been accelerated, contributing to stabilizing monetary market, finance, macro-economy and enhancing economic growth.

Banking inspection and supervision has actively coordinated with functional agencies, local authorities in preventing, controlling, detecting and promptly handling the violation in monetary and banking fields; thereby enhancing effectiveness of state management in banking fields, contributing to ensuring security and safety in banking operations.

However, through the practice of state management on banking operations and supervision and inspection activities and the reality of handling several economic, civil and criminal cases involving banking sector, the SBV and several functional agencies have summarized and pointed out various violations severly affecting confidence of the public, such as: violations in credit granting, loan restructuring, loan classifying and provisioning; violations on capital mobilizing and depositing; violations on internal manangement and monitoring; violations on adequacy ratio; accounting and financial management compliance, etc.

The overview of the conference.

Actually, over the past few years, banking sector has taken a wide range of drastic measures and alerts relating to ensuring safety and security of all banking activities. Most recently, the SBV organized a national e-conference on May 31, 2017 on ensuring safety, security in payment, technology, cash management and safe vault in the banking system.

In order to achieve efficiently the targets set by the NA at the Resolution No.42/2017/QH14 dated June 21, 2017 on the Pilot Program of non-performing loan resolution of credit institutions; Resolution No.88/NQ-CP dated September 13, 2017 on the Government’s Action Plan to implement Directive No.12-CT-TW on “Enhancing the Party’s leadership in economic security amidst socialist-oriented market economy and international economic integration”, the conference was aim of assessing potential risk of banking operations, identifying causes and proposing corrective and preventive measures to further prevent and restrict violations of laws in monetary and banking fields, in combination with promptly and firmly handling violations to create a healthy business environment for money and credit management, ensuring depositors’ interests and maintaining a stable, secured and safe system of credit institutions, thereby contributing to the socio-economic development.

Senior Lieutenant General Bui Van Nam – Deputy Minister of Public Security

Speaking at the conference, Senior Lieutenant General Bui Van Nam – Deputy Minister of Public Security highly appreciated the determination of banking industry in ensuring security and safety of the whole system. Senior Lieutenant General Bui Van Nam provided warning information and proposed a number of solutions to coordinate closely with the SBV and credit institutions throughout the country in order to eliminate and promptly handle violations of laws in banking activities.

At the meeting, delegates focused on analyzing the situation of law violations discovered in state management performance in monetary and banking fields, and results of investigation on economic and criminal cases relating to banking sector; causes of violation of laws in banking activities; the situation of implementing measures to prevent, combat theviolations in the field of banking, ensuring security and safety in banking operations over the past time; the key tasks in the coming time.

Mr Tiet Van Thanh, Director General of Agribank.

In the conclusion speech, SBV Governor Le Minh Hung reaffirmed the importance of the conference and called on the whole banking system to focus on a number of upcoming key tasks as follows:

To accelerate the implementation of solutions mentioned in the NA’s Resolution No.42/2017/QH14 and Prime Minister’s Decision No.1058/QD-TTg; To implement strictly the Action Plan of Banking sector to carry out Government’s Resolution No.88/NQ-CP dated September 14, 2017; To continue completing the legal framework on management policies, banking inspection and supervision activities, regulations on banking operation safety, provisions on governance and administration of credit institutions; To enhance the transparency and publicity in monetary and banking operations, including the formulation and implementation of laws, the management of policies and issues relating to finance, operation and governance of credit institutions; To decisively handle the cross-ownership cases; To renovate and improve the efficiency of banking inspection and supervision in detecting and handling risks and violations; To direct credit institutions to enhance their capacity of management and governance to develop system of risk management and information technology; To improve effectiveness of the Steering Committee, sub- Steering Committee for Corruption and Criminals Prevention in banking sector and at each credit institution; To further enhance the coordination and information exchange between the SBV and law enforcement and functional agencies in detecting and handling violations of laws; To be proactive and strictly handle violations of individuals and organizations in compliance with laws.

The SBV entities shall have to step up their implementation of the National Strategy in Corruption Prevention to 2020; To continue promoting communication and dissemination of policies, guidelines and regulations on banking operations; and training, upgrading capacity, responsibility and ethics of staffs; To formulate the e-channel to receive the information on process violations which are provided from the public.

Mr Nguyen Van Hung, Deputy Chief Inspector of the SBV

Heads of credit institutions must consider and to be responsible for managing, monitoring activities of each unit; To direct departments in the system to check and review the whole activities to ensure the compliance with laws on monetary and banking operations and relevant laws; To comprehensively review, revise or issue internal regulations/procedures and policies to ensure that all employees comply with them to minimize moral risk in banking activities; To complete the organizational structure, improve effectiveness of management, governance and internal audit; To develop and manage effectively employess.

Concurrently, credit institutions are required to enhance transparency, publicity in operations, especially credit activities; To completely handle issues of cross-ownership, violations in capital ownership; To prevent and deal with group benefits, shareholders/major shareholders in the credit institutions; To strictly implement requests petitions and warnings from State Inspection Agencies, State Audit Agencies; To closely coordinate with law enforcement agencies and functional agencies in detecting and handling violations of laws;

To promote communication and education to raise awareness and acknowledge of laws and professional code of conducts, regularly update new methods, tricks and violations used by criminals; To communicate, introduce products and services, especially procedures for customers; To secure information for individuals, enterprises; To conduct transactions at credit institutions in line with SBV’s regulations to prevent and limit risks in the implementation process; Credit institutions must promptly report to the SBV the violations and their handling measures; the difficulties and obstacles of banking performance.

The SBV Governor asked all entities in banking industry to thoroughly implement the SBV’s Directive No.07/CT-NHNN dated October 11, 2017 on enhancing the prevention and control of violations in monetary and banking fields, thereby ensuring security, safety of banking operations, contributing to stabilizing monetary and financial market, and other relevant documents. The SBV Governor expressed his hope that after this conference, along with the political determination of the whole system, the prevention of violations of laws in monetary and banking fields would be carried out more strongly and efficiently, thereby ensuring safety, security and stable development of the banking system in the coming time.

Thoa Le