Circular 52 on ranking credit institutions and foreign bank branches officially takes effect from April 1. Accordingly, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) will classify credit institutions into six groups including Large-scale commercial banks (average total assets per quarter in the year over 100,000 billion dong); Small-scale commercial banks; Foreign bank branches; Financial companies; Financial leasing companies and Cooperative Bank.
With the standard of total assets, SBV divides the group of commercial banks into two groups, applying a different scale when considering the rankings. According to audited financial statements in 2017, 60 percent of banks in Vietnam have total assets of over 100,000 billion dong, classified to large-scale group.
There are more than 10 banks with total assets of less than 100,000 billion dong, according to 2017 total assets statistics, including Bac A Joint Stock Commercial Bank (BacABank), An Binh Joint Stock Commercial Bank (ABBank), Orient Joint Stock Commercial Bank (OCB), National Citizen Bank (NCB), Viet A Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VietABank), Bao Viet Joint Stock Commercial Bank (BaoVietBank), Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank of Industry and Trade (VietBank), Viet Capital Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VietCapitalBank), Kien Long Joint Stock Commercial Bank (KienLongBank), Petrolimex Group Joint Stock Commercial Bank (PGBank) and Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank (SaigonBank). PGBank is one of the banks with the smallest asset size in the system. However, in the near future, this bank will merge into Hochiminh City Development Joint Stock Commercial Bank (HDBank). This deal has been approved by SBV and is in the process of implementation.
Total asset size has continuously changed. But in general, banks with state capital (Big Four) are always the biggest ones with the largest scale. Total asset value of Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), Vietnam Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (AgriBank), Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank of Industry and Trade (VietinBank) and Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) account for about one-third of the total assets of 31 commercial banks (excluding three zero-dong banks and Dong A Joint Stock Commercial Bank).
According to current statistics, 19 out of 31 banks have announced total assets in 2018. Except for SaigonBank, the bank has reduced its scale. Other banks have expanded their assets. Vietnam Thuong Tin Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VietBank) and Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) are the fastest-growing banks in terms of total assets, reaching 24 percent and 19 percent respectively this year.
