The Ho Chi Minh City Development Joint Stock Commercial Bank (HDBank) received the 2018 Elite Quality Recognition Award from J.P. Morgan Chase Bank for its outstanding achievement of 100 per cent MT202 STP Rate.

The award underscored HDBank’s exceptionally high quality of electronic payment transactions.

STP (Straight-Through Processing) is the automated process of payments without manual intervention which increases processing speed, minimises routing errors, lowers operation and transaction costs while resulting in efficient, rapid payment execution and credit to the bank and the customers it serves.

This award is given to leading financial institutions which have state-of-the-art STP electronic payment services and meet JP Morgan’s stringent processing accuracy criteria.

The MT202 STP Award is based on the number of electronic transactions requested and the ratio of international electronic payment execution meeting JP Morgan’s standards, with the ratio set at 80 per cent for banks around the world and 90 per cent for banks in Asia.

With an STP rate of 100 per cent during the assessment year of 2017, HDBank was one of the few global units to win the top prize.

MT202 STP Award is a confirmation of the prestige and quality of HDBank’s international payment service. Customers’ international payment transactions through the HDBank system were executed quickly and accurately, saving time and cost and minimising risks.

The bank has won a number of awards in recent years from Euromoney and Asiamoney, including for Best Cash Management in Asia-Pacific in 2018 and Best Managed Company in Asia for two consecutive years, Best Bank in Vietnam in 2017, and Best Cash Management in Vietnam for five consecutive years until 2016.

It also won the Platinum Award at the 2017 Vision Awards Annual Report Competition organised by the League of American Communications Professionals and made it to the list of Best Companies to Work for in Asia compiled by HR Asia.

HDBank is one of the largest lenders in Viet Nam. It is part of a privileged eco-system that also included aviation and consumer finance.

It now has 280 banking transaction points across the country and nearly 14,000 financial transaction points, and has established relationships with over 400 major global financial institutions.

As of September 30 the bank had total assets of nearly VND200 trillion and equity of nearly VND16 trillion.

Its pre-tax profit in the first nine months of 2018 rose by 51 per cent year-on-year to VND2.9 trillion.

The bank has achieved 73.3 per cent of its full-year profit target for 2018 of VND3.93 trillion.

The high profits have helped the bank keep its return-on-equity ratio above 20 per cent.

The bank has efficiently controlled its operating costs with cost-total income ratio (CIR) falling to 48 per cent in the first nine months from 52.4 per cent at the end of the third quarter of 2017.

HDBank also reported that risk provisioning is 14.7 per cent down year-on-year since the quality of lending improved this year.

Its non-performing loans are only 1.39 per cent and bad debts ratio is 1 per cent, the lowest in the industry.

Moody’s Investors Service last month upgraded the long-term local and foreign-currency deposit and issuer ratings for HDBank to B1.

The baseline credit assessment rate has gone up one level.

The long-term counterparty risk rating and counterparty risk assessments have been kept at B1.

This upgrade by Moody’s reflects HDBank’s big improvements in capacity, capital and profits.

Since 1997 J.P. Morgan Chase has been giving awards to selected US dollar clearing clients for achieving best in-class level of operational excellence. The awards are given to clients who achieve outstanding straight-through results by properly formatting their SWIFT payments.