In Hanoi, on May 30, 2018, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) coordinated with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Australian Government to organize the Fintech Vietnam Forum 2018 with the theme of ‘Fintech for Financial Inclusion’.
Attending the forum were SBV Governor Le Minh Hung, Minister of Science and Technology Chu Ngoc Anh, Mr. Eric Sidgwick, ADB Country Director for Vietnam, Ms. Katherine Pohl, First Secretary of ASEAN Mission Subregional Office, Australian Embassy, Ms. Nienke Trooster, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Vietnam. The forum was also attended by over 300 participants representing the diplomatic missions, the international organizations, national and international experts, commercial banks, as well as Vietnamese and foreign Fintech companies.
SBV Governor Le Minh Hung speaks at the Forum 2018
In his opening speech, Governor Le Minh Hung said that fintech is a new field to Vietnam; there has been over 80 Fintech companies, but with quite limited operational scopes. Although these companies have developed creative and robust solutions, they are still facing difficulties and challenges in the operations of their business model, such as difficulties in capital mobilization, inadequate legal frameworks and the banks’ hesitance in co-operating with them…
Implementing Decision No. 844/QD-TTg by the Prime Minister dated April 18, 2016 approving the Scheme on assistance policies on national innovative startup ecosystem to 2025, the SBV established the SBV Fintech Steering Committee in March, 2017 in order to conduct measures for improving the startup ecosystem, including the fine-tuning of the legal framework with a view to creating favorable conditions for the development of Fintech companies in Vietnam.
With the aim of spurring innovation in financial and banking services, promoting greater financial inclusion in Viet Nam, the Fintech Challenge Vietnam (FCV) contest has been organized in the past 6 months, with the participation of 141 Fintech companies (45 from Viet Nam and 96 from foreign countries), coming from 27 countries in 5 different continents. This reflects the enormous efforts of the SBV Fintech Steering Committee and MBI/ADB in designing the program focusing on five core fintech fields that are critical for financial inclusion, which are: (i) electronic Know Your Customer (e-KYC), (ii) Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs), (iii) Peer-to-peer (P2P) Lending, (iv) e-Payments, and (v) Blockchain technology. Through the FCV, the SBV Fintech Steering Committee would be able to know more in-depth the technologies being applied widely in the fields of finance and banking; at the same time this is also the opportunity for Fintech companies to introduce their innovative ideas to administrators, as well as bankers and investors.
According to the SBV Governor, the constant technological development has created new business models with solutions, products and services that are largely different from the conventional business models. This has been seen clearly in the finance and banking sector. With the robustness in operations and breakthrough technological solutions, Fintech companies have blown a new wind into the operations of the finance and banking system by introducing new products and services aiming at enhancing the customers’ experience and satisfaction. In this context, the commercial banks have had to reshape their business strategies and renovating their conventional services to become more customer-centered. In practice, many banks have co-operated with fintech companies to provide services, thus diversifying their product and service lines to better serve their customers. This co-operation trend has become more popular in recent years.
Nonetheless, the rapid development of the financial technology has also brought significant challenges with regard to information safety and security, cyber security, cybercrime, and cooperation mechanism in information sharing among countries...
Therefore, this forum was organized with a view to sharing new development trends in Fintech, breakthrough technologies that will be applied in the finance and banking systems in the coming decade, and especially the state management measures applied to Fintech in some countries. This was also a great opportunity for representatives of Vietnamese management entities, banks and Fintech firms to gain more information and useful knowledge for their organizations.
Weezi Digital Corp wins the first prize in "Vietnam Fintech Challenge - FCV"
Also at the Forum, the SBV Governor congratulated the 2018 FCV semi-finalists and finalists, especially the most outstanding teams in the contest, whose names were to be announced at this Forum.
Speaking at the forum, Mr. Eric Sidgwick, the ADB Country Director for Vietnam said that the ADB is always ready to support the SBV to encourage the development of Fintech and improve the needed legal framework for the industry’s development.
LH