The Vietnam Report JSC has recently published this year's list of the top 10 most prestigious banks in Viet Nam. The annual list recognises efforts to develop the prestige and institutions in the financial-banking industry.

The ten banks honoured this year are Vietcombank, VietinBank, Techcombank, BIDV, MBBank, VPBank, Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB), AgriBank, TPBank, and Vietnam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VIB).

It also listed the ten most prestigious private joint-stock banks. They are Techcombank, VPBank, ACB, TPBank, VIB, HDBank, Sacombank, SahaBank (SHB), Vietnam Maritime Commercial Join Stock Bank (MSB), and SeABank.

Vu Dang Vinh, General Director of Vietnam Report, said that in the first five months of the year, credit growth reached 3.17 per cent, significantly lower than the 8 per cent recorded in the same period last year. The profit before tax of the banking system in the first quarter was lower than expected.

Vietnam Report's survey results show that the industry is unlikely to see any breakthrough in growth in the last six months of the year.

Most banks believe the industry will be steady in the second half of 2023.

Vinh added that at the 2023 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, many banks set cautious business plans for 2023, while all banks adjusted their profit plans.

This shows that 2023 is seen by the banking industry as a challenging year as they have to continue to share resources and help cushion pressure on businesses amid slowing global economic growth.

Meanwhile, problems such as interest rate hikes, bad debt, and frozen real estate and bond markets, which have not been fully reflected in last year's business results, will have a significant impact on the banks' operations this year.

Base on the survey’s result, Vietnam Report said that challenges that the banking industry faces in 2023, include rising bad debt, higher inflation risks, low global economic growth, and recession of the stock, real estate, and bond markets.

In addition, the emergence of Fintech companies are becoming fierce competition, undermining banks' dominance in the industry, which is a big problem that banks will confront in the near future.

The top 10 most prestigious Vietnamese commercial banks were selected using scientific and objective principles.

Banks are evaluated and ranked based on three key criteria: financial capability as demonstrated by the most recent year's financial statements, media reputation and survey results of related subjects conducted in June 2023. — VNS