Although no bank has announced specifically for the Lunar New Year (Tet) 2019 bonus, it is expected that the bonus level will be quite high, since the business results last year of many banks were very good exceeding the profit target plan.
Big profit
There has not been any final figure on the banking industry’s profit in 2018, however, according to the estimates of the National Financial Supervisory Commission, the industry’s profit last year grew by 40 percent and many banks have had irregularly high profit growth.
Nghiem Xuan Thanh, Chair of Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank) said that in 2018, Vietcombank achieved a record high profit with over 18 trillion dong.
By the end of 2018, Tien Phong Joint Stock Commercial Bank (TPBank) got pre-tax profit of 2.258 trillion dong, nearly doubled that of 2017 and far exceeding the planned target.
According to financial analysts, the list of high-profit banks last year also include Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) and Asia Joint Stock Commercial Bank (ACB) with pre-tax profit of over 10 trillion dong and 6.339 trillion dong respectively.
When banks make big profits, the average income of employees in many banks has also increased largely over the recent time, for example in Tien Phong Joint Stock Commercial Bank (TPBank), it increased by 37.3 percent; in Bac A Joint Stock Commercial Bank (Bac A Bank), the increase was 37.1 percent; in Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), it increased by 26 percent. Vietcombank is paying highest salaries to employees compared to other banks in the system, only after some foreign banks. The average income of Vietcombank’s staff and employees reached 38 million dong per month in the first nine months of 2018, while in Techcombank it’s only over 27 million dong.
The reason for the strong increase in salaries for bank staff last year was due to the high profit margin per employee in many banks. Leading the banking system in terms of earning capacity of each employee is Vietcombank and Techcombank. In particular, each Vietcombank employee earns about one billion dong for the bank last year.
Will Tet bonus be big?
A strong increase in the earning power of bank staff is the basis for better rewards during the Tet season of 2019, especially in banks with large profit. There are rumours on the financial market that Vietcombank employees will have a good Tet bonus this year.
According to a Vietcombank leader, this bank’s Tet bonus is considered and decided based on the capacity and labour productivity of each employee. The average Tet bonus of an employee of Vietcombank in recent years is about three times of monthly income.
Although not yet officially announced the Tet bonus in 2019, but the general director of a bank said, in addition to the 13th month salary, this bank also has a Lunar New Year bonus for officials and employees with 2-3 times of monthly income salary.
ACB’s leaders said that the annual bonus depends on the profit results of the bank. Therefore, if the bank can earn large profit exceeding the plan, Tet bonus will increase. Financial experts forecast that ACB’s profit in 2018 will exceed the target set at the beginning of the year.
On 28th January, Techcombank will pay bonus to employees. However, the specific number has not been disclosed. In previous years, Techcombank was the bank that regularly promised a great bonus to its employees, up to seven times of monthly salary.
Meanwhile, the general director of a small and medium bank were optimistic that although the business results were not as big as for the “big banks”, the bank’s profit doubled compared to the target set at the beginning of the year. Therefore, the Board of directors, Board of Management of this bank will also consider higher Tet bonuses.
Although the level of salary and bonus of the banking industry is quite high, the situation of job turnover of bank employees in the last months of the year has always occurred. Many banks have to increase recruitment activities to compensate for the shortage at the beginning of the year. It can be said that banking personnel has never been stable.
