Immediately after the State Bank issued Circular 01 regulating the rescheduling, exemption, and reduction of interest rates for customers affected by the disease, many banks have issued internal documents, starting to support enterprises and the people.
On 24th March, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) organized an online meeting with 12 joint-stock commercial banks on the implementation of solutions to support businesses and people damaged by the Covid-19 virus.
At the meeting, General Director of TPBank Nguyen Hung said, before TT01 came into effect, TPBank took the initiative to review the customer portfolio, then contributed opinions to the construction of TT01, taking specific measures to support customers.
In the TPBank's analysis of customer portfolio, about 20% of customers are severely affected, 40% are relatively affected, 40% are slightly affected, and the remaining 13% of the customers are not affected, including those operating in the fields of consuming and essential goods, etc.
Thus, the implementation of TT01 has the advantage of creating conditions for customers who have no revenue during this period such as aviation, tourism, hotels, etc. to reduce financial pressure. Since the effective date of Circular 01, TPBank has planned to consider rescheduling debt about 200 customers with a loan balance of 1,500 billion VND in March.
Meanwhile, the total number of customers affected is equivalent to about 20-30 trillion VND per total outstanding loan. According to Mr. Hung, for Circular 01, there has not been a sign of any problem yet, and the only difficulty is that the number of documents submitted to consider and assess the debt structure must still follow the provisions of Circular 22 and must still be in full order.
The problem here is the resources required to implement it.
Meanwhile, Deputy General Director of ACB Tu Tien Phat said that from March 18, ACB had received customer requests, and according to the preliminary statistics, the bank had received 392 customer requests with a total loan balance of over 4,000 billion VND. Such a number is relatively large.
Regarding new lending, before January arrived, ACB had announced a loan package of 25,000 billion VND, with an interest rate that is around 1-2% / year lower.
By the end of February, ACB had disbursed 21,900 customers with more than 20,000 billion VND, pledging to expand this package after it ran out If there is a group of customers who are seriously and directly affected by this disease, ACB will provide an additional credit package of 5,000 billion VND, lending to customers to restore business activities after the epidemic.
ACB set a term of 12 months for this package, meaning that customers only have to pay after 12 months have passed. With the policy of fee reduction under the policies of the State Bank and Napas, according to Phat, ACB provides customers with not only partial discounts but also fee-free packages, especially for online transactions.
For some cards, ACB also provides free transactions on ATMs, even if customers use ATM cards in other banks. In addition, for the international payment of corporate customers, the bank reduces the transaction fees by 50%.
At SHB Bank, Deputy General Director Ninh Thi Lan Phuong said that SHB also had had solutions to be able to operate continuously such as provisioning of points to avoid blockade, allowing employees to work from home, and organizing online meetings.
For customers, there are a number of solutions and policies such as disinfecting solution, masks, providing a 30-50% transaction fee discount for remittance services, providing an additional interest rate valued from 0.4% to 0.5% for customers depositing money online, and providing a Covid-19 insurance package for customers depositing savings and personal loans.
SHB also reviews the business activities of enterprises affected by COVID-19 to provide appropriate support packages. The Bank has established a COVID-19 Directing Committee headed by the General Director and has three deputy directors in charge of three areas.
Ninh Thi Lan Phuong also added that regarding the treasury field, the official letters of the State Bank were very clear. SHB would disinfect money, ATM, machines with a thicker frequency, ensuring staff’s peace of mind.
Deputy General Director of MB Pham Thi Trung Ha shared that immediately after the State Bank's Circular 01 had been issued on March 13, on that same night, MB had also issued documents in the whole system.
According to Ha, if the bank focuses on evaluating all customers, it will take a relatively long time. Thus, the whole system of the bank has agreed that it would only assess the criteria related to income and revenue after COVID-19, and it is also the most important part of the revenue of customers.
So far, MB has been implementing this measure mainly in terms of its principal and maturity debts since the beginning of March, as there are not many original debts because they have been restructured.
According to the assessment of the Central Region, which identified customers with a 70-80% decrease in revenue, MB has built an initial list, about 1,000 billion VND have received an interest rate reduction of about 1% compared to the current interest rate they are being applied to.
Regarding new lending, since February 14, 2020, the bank has offered a package for small and medium customers of 10,000 billion VND and is currently disbursing gradually.
According to Head of the Credit Department of economic sectors Nguyen Quoc Hung, when the State Bank of Vietnam implemented instructions to credit institutions, joint-stock commercial banks also fiercely took part. According to the preliminary grasp, a number of banks have issued the internal regulations TT01, including ACB, HDBank, VIB, SHB, Sacombank, etc.
This shows that after participating in giving comments, commercial banks have actively issued documents guiding the implementation, thereby creating conditions for removing difficulties for customers in time.
In the coming time, banks will closely monitor the epidemic situation, continue to drastically, proactively, and effectively implement measures to prevent and control the epidemic; grasp customers' business activities in order to promptly apply supportive measures such as rescheduling debt payment, considering exemption and reduction of loan interests, keeping debt group, fee reduction for customers who are having difficulty repaying loans due to the effects of the epidemic.
>> Vietnam’s banking industry affected by COVID-19
Source: http://ttvn.toquoc.vn/
