Data is crucial for banking industry to move to new development phase

Data is crucial for banking industry to move to new development phase

Attendees at the seminar. VNS Photo

The banking industry, one of the leading fields in applying technology and digitalising services, has all the conditions to move to a new development phase where data is considered the centre for all operations, decision-making and customer service, Vice Chairman and General Secretary of the Vietnam Banks Association (VNBA) Nguyễn Quốc Hùng said on Wednesday.

At a seminar titled ‘Building the backbone of Digital Finance: Resilient and Scalable Data Strategies for Việt Nam's Financial institutions’ organised by the VNBA in coordination with IEC Group, Hùng said: “A comprehensive digital transformation to build a modern, flexible and sustainable data infrastructure is one of the leading strategic directions of the banking industry. 

"The transformation is not only a technological requirement, but also a problem of organisational architecture, management capacity and the ability to synchronise connections between organisations throughout the banking industry. Factors such as open integration capabilities, controlled data sharing, real-time big data analysis, multi-layered security and flexible scalability are gradually becoming essential criteria in the long-term development strategy of credit institutions."

According to Hùng, 2025 is truly an important milestone, when a series of new policies on data, technology and digital transformation officially come to life in Việt Nam. In particular, the Data Law, which took effect on July 1, has laid the first comprehensive legal foundation for the development, exploitation and sharing of data in a controlled manner.

“The banking industry, which is one of the leading fields in applying technology and digitalising services, has all the conditions to move to a new development phase — a phase that takes data as the centre for all operations, decision-making and customer service, towards a smart, flexible, safe and scalable digital banking ecosystem, where data is not only an operational factor but truly becomes a core resource for growth and innovation,” Hùng said.

He added that to date, more than 90 per cent of banking transactions at many credit institutions are conducted via digital channels, and more than 87 per cent of adults in Việt Nam have bank accounts. In addition, services like deposits, account opening, card issuance, money transfer and lending have been fully digitised, helping to shorten time, save costs and improve convenience for customers. Around 711,000 institutional accounts have been biometrically authenticated and fully updated.

In the near future, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) will also issue regulations allowing the closure of all accounts without authentication data, and at the same time integrate verification with the VNeID digital identity system for automatic authentication.

“By June 2025, more than 95 per cent of customer data at major commercial banks has been standardised, eliminating duplicate and inaccurate information. This not only helps improve data reliability, but also reduces risks in credit and transaction operations,” Hùng said.

Director of the SBV's IT Department Lê Hoàng Chính Quang told the seminar: “Digital transformation cannot be effectively implemented without a systematic data strategy. And for data to be valuable, the prerequisite is to have a flexible and sustainable data infrastructure that serves both the macro-management and micro-operation needs of each credit institution.”

According to Quang, the banking industry has achieved remarkable results in this transformation, such as the completion of a technical connection with the National Population Database and a credit information database with the information of more than 54 million borrowers.

However, the industry is still facing big challenges in data management and exploitation, such as fragmented data, lack of synchronisation in connection standards and limited ability to exploit real-time data and data sharing mechanisms among relevant agencies.

“As the Data Law officially came into effect from July 2025, the banking industry, which is sensitive and uses data on a large scale, needs to proactively adjust its infrastructure, processes and technology to comply with the new law, while still ensuring the necessary flexibility in exploiting data to serve innovation and improve user experience," Quang said.

At the event, which gathered more than 30 senior banking leaders and experts, participants also discussed modernising data architecture to ensure high performance, security and sector-wide interoperability; optimising end-to-end data governance from data collection, processing and analytics to secure sharing and regulatory compliance; and adapting to future trends in banking data strategy. 

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