Rural areas need banking services, says official

Nguyen Toan Thang, deputy governor of the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) makes a speech at the Banking Vietnam 2015 on May 19. Photo vietnamplus.vn

Nguyen Toan Thang, deputy governor of the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV), made this statement at the opening ceremony of the 17th Banking Vietnam 2015 in Ha Noi on May 19.

He added that banks had not taken advantage of cross-border banking services based upon the growing activities in trade, education, training and tourism.

According to SBV, the proportion of people living in the countryside owning bank accounts reached 22 per cent by the end of 2013, lower than the average rate in neighbouring countries, such as Thailand, Malaysia and China. Some 20 per cent of residents in remote and rural areas own savings accounts, which is much lower than Thailand (70 per cent) and Malaysia (63 per cent).

Attending the event, Kaleem Chaudhry, Oracle's senior director of sales consulting in ASEAN, referred to the need to use large amounts of data in analysing banking.

Chaudhry said that before having such data, decisions were made based upon transaction data, but after the availability of this data, decisions are now based upon reviewing all data, including videos and images, documents, social data and machine-generated data.

Data could also be received by using multi-channel customer interactions and market data, location-based information, news and financial reports, and applying new metrics to pricing models, underwriting, trading strategies and fraud models.

As Chaudhry said, banks should set three priorities: complying with regulatory requirements, providing better customer service experience and increasing operational efficiencies.

The event, which concludes on May 20, is a forum for discussions on information technology applications, and product and service development in the banking sector. Organised by the SBV and International Data Group (IDG), it is also part of a series of activities celebrating Viet Nam's Science and Technology Day (May 18).