Bottom-dwelling interest rates drive credit growth
Thanks to reduced operating costs and lower deposit interest rates, banks have increased credit packages in the beginning of March 2024 with low interest rates for production, business, living expenses, housing purchase, and consumption.
Recently, SHB has raised the credit limit of the “Preferred Loans – Prosperity Dragon” program from VND 18,000 billion to VND 23,000 billion to help individuals supplement reserve capital for goods reserves, production and business to serve the market as well as to prepare money for shopping, payment, and expenses. At the same time, the medium and long-term loan interest rate has decreased to 5.79%; the short-term loan interest rate has decreased to 6.39%. Customers will also receive additional benefits such as a credit card with a maximum limit of VND 200 million, a 2% reduction in interest rates for unsecured loans for supplemental working capital purposes, and more.
This bank is also allocating VND 10,000 billion for loans to production and business enterprises with interest rates as low as 5.8% per year and a credit package of VND 1,000 billion for enterprises with a demand for purchasing cars with preferential interest rates as low as 6.5% per year. This interest rate applies to new loans in 2024 and extends until December 31, 2024.
Representatives of SHB’s leadership stated that in 2024, the bank is oriented towards promoting credit growth in green credit, small and medium-sized enterprises, and other priority sectors according to the government’s guidelines.
On the other hand, ACB applies interest rates of 7-8% per year for home loans or fixed interest rates of 9% per year for the first two years. OCB offers a preferential interest rate of 7-8% per year, and without promotion, the interest rate for loans is around 10% per year. The home loan interest rate in January 2024 at VPBank is 5.9% per year. HDBank applies a preferential interest rate of 6.8% per year for loans. MSB offers a home loan interest rate of 6.8% per year…
In state-owned banks, Agribank has allocated VND 10,000 billion for consumer loans to meet living needs with interest rates starting from 6% per year for loans over 12 months for individuals to borrow for essential needs such as buying houses, land, construction, repair, and consumption. Individuals borrowing money to buy houses at BIDV will receive an interest rate of 7% per year for the first 12 months.
According to economists’ assessments, with the new credit growth management mechanism of the SBV, businesses’ access to credit in 2024 will change in a more positive direction, and the current interest rates will no longer be a barrier for customers to access bank capital, as the current interest rates have gone down to a fairly low level. Specifically, interest rates for loans in all terms and all sectors have decreased by about 2.5% compared to the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. In which, the interest rate for loans in priority sectors according to the government’s regulations is now only below 4% per year.
Digitalization of credit activities
In addition to implementing large-scale low-interest credit packages, many banks also promote digital transformation and the application of electronic means in many stages of the loan process, thereby increasing convenience and customer experience, reducing service time, and making it easier for customers to access capital sources.
As one of the leading banks in digital transformation, SHB has launched a series of digital services that are executed end-to-end, such as: Online Disbursement, Loan against Savings Book, Online Credit Card Application… Loan registration and approval process are completely digitized, reducing the processing time from several days to several hours or minutes.
A series of products and services being digitized by SHB to enhance user experience
Among the digital services, Online Disbursement is a product that individual customers prefer to experience 100% on the digital platform of SHB Mobile, SHB SAHA, and can easily register for disbursement within just less than 1 minute, at any time – 24/7.
Specifically, when logging into the digital bank SHB Mobile or SHB SAHA, within just 1 minute, individual customers can easily register for disbursement loans, loans against savings books, or credit card registration. The product is considered one of the steps that complete the ecosystem for personal financial transactions, creating a closed loop from the account opening step to the issuance and management of financial products such as payment cards, credit cards, or loans.
SHB is also implementing the RLOS system in the loan process. Customer loan applications will be processed accurately and smoothly on the RLOS system in the shortest time, improving the customer experience when using banking services.
For business customers, SHB is currently one of the pioneering banks in the market to fully digitize the loan process with super-fast loan approval time within 24 hours. Especially, many financial transactions that previously required a visit to a transaction point can now be done online, such as monitoring the status of loan application processing, disbursement, account opening, international payments, and foreign exchange trading… In addition, by using the digital bank SHB Corporate online, customers can register for loans or use pre-approved disbursement services online with attractive unsecured credit limits up to VND 5 billion.
With the efforts of the banking system in general, and SHB in particular, to promote low-interest credit to priority sectors and digitize lending activities, along with the synchronous participation of all levels and sectors, it is expected that credit growth will improve and difficulties in accessing capital for individuals and businesses will be resolved, making positive contributions to economic development.
