Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MSB) has just been officially named the best bank in Vietnam by Global Finance magazine and one of the 30 best banks in Asia Pacific in 2019. The award is a recognition for the relentless efforts of MSB in bringing the best experience to customers when using products and services of the bank.
Best Bank is the world’s largest and most prestigious award annually organised by Global Finance to find and honour banks that best meet the diverse needs of customers. These are also the banks that show strong efforts and ability to adapt to market challenges to overcome rivals.
This is the second time that MSB has received this prestigious award after the first time in 2017. The Best Bank Award is voted based on rigorous criteria through the advice of business executives and consulting and analysing experts in the field of finance and banking and through polling of over 33,000 readers to increase the accuracy and reliability of the results.
To achieve this award, MSB has passed rigorous evaluation and met the criteria of asset growth, profitability, geographic scope, strategic relationship, business development and product improvement.
The representative of Global Finance commented that MSB had a strong and remarkable development in recent years, reflected through the significant growth in almost all financial and business indicators.
Specifically, in the first nine months of 2019, MSB’s total assets increased by 7.7 percent to over 148 trillion dong at the end of the period, of which customer loans increased by 18.5 percent to 57.828 trillion dong. In particular, MSB’s core businesses achieved double-digit growth, in particular, individual credit increased by more than 46 percent and SME credit increased by 42 percent compared to the end of 2018. Good credit growth brought in 2.041 trillion dong of net interest income, up 27.8 percent over the same period last year, service income also increased by 82%, contributing 350 billion dong of net interest.
As a result, the total profit before tax of MSB in the first nine months of 2019 reached more than 1.063 trillion dong, up 267 percent over the same period last year. MSB also focused on investing heavily in the platform to improve service quality and provide the best experience for customers. Up to now, MSB has expanded its network in 51 provinces and cities across the country with nearly 300 branches, transaction offices and more than 500 ATMs.
This impressive growth is a result of MSB’s efforts, with the right development strategy when focusing on customers and the bank acts as a “Companion” to bring better financial management and opportunities for strong growth for individual and corporate customers. Concretising this strategy, over the past time, MSB has constantly sought and improved to provide customers with many convenient financial solutions and efforts in improving customer experience based on four principles including simple, proactive, connected and understanding.
For corporate customers, MSB proactively accompanies businesses through specialised financial solution “Comprehensive credit package for small businesses” with preferential interest rate policy, competition and credit limits up to 112 percent of collateral value, maximum of 10 billion dong and approval of three-day quick limit and simple documents.
Meanwhile, for individual customers, MSB has launched a comprehensive financial solution package for M-Business owners with outstanding fee incentives that can save up to 80 million dong per year and integrating many utilities: Free of charge for all transactions via electronic channels, free withdrawals at ATMs, limit for transferring via electronic channels up to six billion per day, business owners are allowed to immediately approve credit cards with high limit and cashback preference of up to 14 million dong per year.
Constantly improving to bring the best experience to customers, in the past year, MSB is also the first bank to apply artificial intelligence (AI) in issuing credit cards for customers to shorten the time to only 24 hours, completing online operation and customers do not need proof of income.
Not only that, keeping pace with the constant development of technology, MSB has also invested heavily and deployed applications to enhance transaction experience such as Internet Banking, Mobile Banking, payment via QR Code, Samsung Pay.
Pioneering in providing products and services to customers is the basis for MSB to receive the support of nearly two million individual customers and 40,000 corporate customers. That is also the difference that helps MSB reach and deserve to receive the Best Bank Award in Vietnam in 2019.
With a positive change in business strategy and strong investment in improving customer experience, MSB expects to complete the target of 2019 to increase 11 percent of total assets, reaching 153 trillion dong; increasing nine percent of charter capital to 12.75 trillion dong; outstanding loans rose by 35 percent and profit before tax increased by 77 percent to 1.86 trillion dong.
