Human resources in the banking industry are returning to the ‘golden age’ with high salaries, great rewards, and attractive policies to attract talents. Statistics from the 2018 financial reports showed that at least three local banks have paid over 30 million dong per month per employee, namely Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank), and Military Joint Stock Commercial Bank (MB). In many other banks such as Vietnam International Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VIB), Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank of Industry and Trade (Vietinbank), Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), Vietnam Prosperity Joint Stock Commercial Bank (VPBank), and Hochiminh City Development Joint Stock Commercial Bank (HDBank), the average payment is from 20 to 30 million dong. Employees in foreign banks and joint ventures even have a better income. For example, in HSBC, it is more than 50 million dong per person per month.
Not only high salaries, policies for attracting personnel in general and talents in particular in banks are also increasingly attractive and competitive. Some banks have insurance package for sale team (for example Saigon Thuong Tin Joint Stock Commercial Bank (Sacombank)), some lend their staff with preferential interest rates only slightly higher than the mobilising interest rates, some have private health care package for their employees and family members. Some banks attract talents with overseas travelling, some offer promotion opportunities.
One of the recent policies adopted by banks, especially private banks, is to issue preferred shares and bonus shares to employees.
For example, in VIB in 2018, nearly two million treasury shares with a book value of 44.5 billion dong were set aside to reward employees. In 2019, the bank’s shareholders even agreed to use more than four times the number of treasury shares of 2018, up to 7.7 million shares with a market price of about 175 billion dong to reward its staff. According to the bank’s leader, rewarding treasury shares is to retain talents, and the rewarded shares will not be restricted to transfer and can be sold to collect money.
In addition to awarding treasury shares to qualified employees, VIB leaders were also rewarded with great rewards this year when shareholders approved the award of 7.27 billion dong to former leaders, in which 6.4 billion dong is for the members of the Board of directors and 857 million dong for members of the Supervisory Board.
Asia Joint Stock Commercial Bank (ACB) regularly issues stocks with preferential prices (ESOP) to its employees. This year, the bank has a plan to reward treasury shares to employees and it is waiting for the shareholders’ approval at the annual meeting on April 23. The number of rewarded treasury shares is unknown. Currently ACB holds 41.4 million treasury shares with a value of about 1.25 trillion dong. If all these shares are shared, ACB’s staff will receive a huge reward.
Techcombank also plans to issue preferential shares to employees to retain talents this year. According to the plan for shareholders to approve in the meeting on April 13, the bank will issue a maximum of 10 million common shares to its employees at a price equal to par value of 10,000 dong per share. Techcombank will not limit transactions for ESOP shares. Though the shares are not rewarded as those of ACB and VIB, with the issuance price of only 10,000 dong, they can easily be sold on the market and give Techcombank’s staff a margin of more than 15,000 dong per share (TCB’s price on stock exchange is over 25,000 dong per share).
In another development related to the reward of employees, according to our sources, at the end of March, a number of local banks (including Maritime Joint Stock Commercial Bank (Maritime Bank)), joint-venture banks, and foreign banks in Vietnam have settled the 2018 rewards for employees with a relatively large bonus, ranging from one to four months’ salary.
