Vietnam

Prudential Vietnam and Maritime Bank signed a cooperation agreement whereby the bank's staff will directly distribute the life insurance products. The staff will first undergo training by the insurer.

Vietnam International Bank gross profit last year surged 72 percent to $50.8 million.

Vietnam's commercial banks are now prioritising increased profits from card payment services. The domestic market now has 28.5 million bank cards which are mainly used just for cash withdrawals.

Vietnam's Eximbank's net profit surged 60 percent to US$87 million last year.

VietinBank's net profit jumped 169 percent to US$164.7 million last year. The Hanoi-based bank revealed in a finacial report that its annual lending jumped 43 per cent from 2009 to US$11 billion.

National Bank of Cambodia NBC recorded that 130 new ATMs were installed by commercial banks last year. This brings the total Kingdom-wide to 501 at the end of 2010 – a rise of 35 percent on 2009.

Businesses complain that the “dual foreign currency price mechanism” is still persisting.

Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank announced to increase the deposit rates for depositors in US dollars and euro by up to 1.5 percent per year, starting from February 17, 2011.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung approved Vietnam Post's capital contribution in LienVietBank by merging its member company of Vietnam Postal Savings Service Co into the bank.

DaiABank targets over 600 billion dong of pre-tax profit in 2011. The bank planned to submit the targeted year plan to the shareholders in the annual shareholders meeting to be held in the near future.

Total card transactions made tremendous growth in Vietnam in 2010 against five years ago when the first one was conducted.

The State Bank of Vietnam issued a regulation to require the state – owned and joint-stock commercial banks to report certain operational targets of their 2011 plans.

The HCM City People's Committee has set up a team to investigate if banks have been selling US dollars at above the official selling rate by charging "fees". 

Standard Chartered Bank is optimistic about Vietnam's economy and sees many growth opportunities in the country.

Standard Chartered Bank (Vietnam) would be the first international bank to join the Smartlink network.

Taiwan's First Commercial Bank opened its second branch in Vietnam to further expand into the emerging market.