From the beginning of the year until now, the number of banks announcing the recruitment of staff has been increasing with plans to hire hundreds and thousands of people. The acceleration of recruitment from the early year of banks is not surprising considering the sector’s business results in 2017 and optimistic forecasts in 2018.
Nam A Bank at the beginning of the year announced the plan to recruit 1,000 employees in 2018 for the positions of director/Deputy director of branches and transaction offices; manager/Head of Sales Department; tellers and specialists in the fields of customer relationship, card business, foreign exchange product marketing, and information, etc. According to information, in the third quarter of 2017, the bank recruited 500 new employees for different positions. Nguyen Luong Hieu, Head of Human Resource and Training Department of NamA Bank said that the large-scale recruitment is to serve the bank’s scale expansion and business development.
Many other banks such as Vietcombank, VietinBank, VIB, VPBank, Sacombank, SeABank, and HDBank, etc. have also posted recruitment news for many positions. For example, Sacombank is looking for accountants, credit specialists, customer specialists, product development specialists, card specialists, etc. VIB is recruiting tellers, senior customer management specialists, debt recovery specialists, heads of bad debt recovery team, and customer service specialists, etc. for its branches and transaction offices nationwide. VPBank is also recruiting hundreds of employees.
With flourishing business situation and optimistic growth prospects, banks are strongly recruiting in preparation for their expansion plants. Notably, VPBank, HDBank and MBBank recruited the highest number of employees last year. The new personnel of these banks focus on consumer finance as many banks pursue retail lending, especially when they have their own finance companies such as VPBank with FE Credit and HDBank with HDSAISON.
According to the consolidated financial report of VPBank, in late 2017, the number of the bank’s personnel reached 23,879 people, up by nearly 6,500 people compared to the beginning of the year. In particular, the number of employees increased in the parent bank was 2,100 people; while over 4,300 people were recruited for the bank’s two subsidiaries, mainly for FE Credit.
Similarly, in 2017, HDBank developed by over 22 percent of individual customers, 14 percent of corporate customers, established 19 branches and transaction offices, increasing the total number of branches and transaction offices of its entire network to 240 units. Its finance company HDSAISON alone served over 3.4 million customers with over 10,000 sales and service introduction points. Along with the above expansion and development, HDBank added 2,600 employees in 2017, raising the total number to 13,728.
Financial reports of banks showed that the total number of 14 banks including BIDV, VPBank, VietinBank, Sacombank, Vietcombank, HDBank, MBBank, ACB, Techcombank, LienVietPostBank, Eximbank, VIB, TPBank, and NCB by the end of 2017 reached over 178,000 people, in which nearly 20,000 people were newly recruited, up by 13 percent compared to late 2016.
Most recently, ACB launched a recruitment campaign nationwide. The campaign will be implemented until June 2018. In this period, the bank will hire 900 employees for the sales, customer care and operational employees, etc. targeting those who have experience and graduated or graduating students. Candidates will not take entrance exams if they have two or more years of experience or apply for a specialist position. ACB’s recruitment campaign highlights that the relationship between ACB and candidates is a win-win relationship. For the employees, that is career development. Therefore, ACB has actively changed its personnel policy to create favourable conditions for their employees to develop such as allowing employees to self-determine their career path, encouraging the ability to control career of each individual, and granting good opportunities for employees with leadership capability.
According to ACB’s Chair of the Board of directors Tran Hung Huy, in over 25 years of development, from 20 people in the beginning period, ACB now has over 10,000 employees working full-time in 356 branches, transaction offices, headquarters and subsidiaries. About 80 percent of middle and senior management personnel of the bank are promoted internally. In addition to increasing personnel and promoting business, ACB has spent millions of USD on personnel management, including the development of an ecosystem which integrates technology in payroll management, evaluation, recruitment, and training of employees, etc.
Banking and finance expert Dr Can Van Luc said that the number of employees in the banking and finance sector increased fast in the past year but the personnel demand remains very large. This is particularly meaningful when the number of people working in the banking sector only accounts for a very small proportion in the total labour force of the economy.
In this year’s annual general meetings, many banks promoted the issuance of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). In March 2018, Techcombank’s Shareholder Committee has approved the ESOP, in which the issuance source will be taken from the treasury shares with about over 17 million shares. The condition for purchasing preferential shares is that employees must have at least one year working in the bank and satisfy a number of other criteria. The purchase price is 10,000 dong per share, while on the Over-The-Counter market, the share is valued about 100,000 dong per share.
VPBank’s Shareholders Committee has approved the plan to issue 33 million shares to employees under the ESOP in the second quarter of 2018. The issuance price is equal to the par value, much lower than the stock price on the bourse (about 60,000 dong per share).
HDBank will issue 20 million shares under ESOP at 10,000 dong per share. Meanwhile, VIB has plan to use 1,975,500 treasury shares to reward its employees.
In fact, the issuance of ESOP shares to employees in the banking sector has been applied by many banks such as LienVietPostBank, ACB, and MBBank. According to experts, it is a good policy which both helps bank to have more capital and retain talents. The ESOP shares have become more attractive as bank shares throughout 2017 and early 2018 sharply rose and regained the “king stock” position.
The survey of Navigos Group the owner of VietnamWorks website and Navigos Search personnel recruitment company in the banking sector pointed out that 90 percent of banks paid their employees from 10 to 30 million dong per month. However, 26 percent of banks admitted that their salaries and remuneration is not really competitive and it is the biggest difficulty in recruiting staff.
Sharing about the bonus level, the majority of employees at the surveyed banks said that their annual bonus is equivalent to about 1-3 months of salary. About 18 percent of the respondents received bonus of 3-5 months of salary, 7 percent of those received bonus of 5-7 months of salary, and 5 percent of those received bonus of over seven month of salary.
