
Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) Pham Tien Dungsaid accessing the national population database will help banks to check and authenticatenew customer information more easily.
Commercial banks will promote lending services on their electronicplatforms based on this database.
The draft amending the Law on Credit Institutions has manyregulations specifying banking services via electronic devices.
Besides that, several provisions supplemented by the Civil Law andthe Law on Electronic Transactions are necessary to complete the legalframework for online lending.
Online lending, mostly small loans, has been implemented by manybanks for a long time. However, this lending form has not been specified in thelaw. So many banks have carried out online lending with fear that the lendingcontract will be declared invalid in the case having a legal dispute.
In addition, due to a large amount of junk data and virtualaccounts, banks are not interested in promoting online lending because ofhaving many risks.
Since the national population database was formed, the SBV has coordinatedwith the Ministry of Public Security to verify 25 million customers in thecredit information database and focuses on verifying the remaining 26 millioncustomers within the next few months.
Owning this huge amount of clean customer data is a goldenopportunity for banks to promote digital services and products, especiallyonline lending.
Allowing the banks to access the population database together withcompleting the legal framework on digital banking is an opportunity for thebanking industry to grow strongly in the future. A solid legal corridor andclean database are the foundation to move towards all banks operating in thedigital environment, said economist Le Xuan Nghia.
Nguyen Thi Kim Oanh, Vietcombank Deputy General Director, said thedevelopment of online lending would solve the needs of people and banks.
In the past, the banks were still cautious of online lendingbecause the customer database still had junk information and was notauthenticated.
The other problem is the automatic credit appraisal and approvaldue to data limitations and unclear legal basis. One more thing is to lack ofcustomer information to collect debts.
But accessing the national population database and applying theautomatic appraisal and approval mechanism is a good opportunity forState-owned joint-stock commercial banks to solve those problems, helpingindividuals easily get online banking loans with reasonable interest rates,Oanh told Đau tu (Investment)newspaper.
A representative of Techcombank said in the past, the traditionallending process was often carried out through many steps, spending a lot oftime and human resources. Now, thanks to the bank's large data on customers andthe national population database, the bank hopes to improve the speed ofprocessing lending procedures and enhance risk management.
Several banks have coordinated with the Police Department forAdministrative Management of Social Order (C06) under the Ministry of PublicSecurity to start testing a citizen credit scoring system based on populationdata.
The banks will initially provide unsecured loans for small loansbased on the citizen credit scoring system. This solution will promote theretail lending of the banks.
According to a leader of the Bank for Investment and Developmentof Vietnam (BIDV), the central bank must have official regulations onimplementing this solution.
In addition, Oanh from Vietcombank said the Ministry of PublicSecurity needs to update population data promptly to ensure a smoothconnection between the banking system with VNeID - the electronicidentification application and the citizen credit scoring system not to affectthe customer's experience.
According to Oanh, the SBV and other State management agencies mustalso adjust relevant legal provisions to create favourable conditions forproviding loans in the digital environment.
Ngo Minh Sang, director of individual clients at Viet CapitalBank, said that the legal documents have not kept up with the changes in themarket, so it is necessary to change the legal documents soon and tosynchronise data.
For example, the tax code is managed by the tax authority, whilethe bank manages the credit information. The national data must synchronise theinformation./.
VNA