“The Voice of Vietnam: Chairman Trần Hùng Huy Shares Insights at the APEC Forum.”

ACB made history as the first Vietnamese bank to be invited to speak at the APEC Public-Private Dialogue (PPD), a prestigious forum bringing together policymakers, scholars, and businesses from the 21 APEC economies. With this milestone, ACB solidified its position as a pioneering voice for Vietnamese enterprises at APEC, actively driving transformations for a sustainable, humane, and inclusive future.

Demographic Shifts: No Longer a Distant Future

The APEC PPD serves as a platform for connecting the public sector, businesses, and academia to collaboratively address shared regional challenges. In 2025, the PPD, held alongside the Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM3) in South Korea, focused on two critical themes: responding to demographic shifts and cooperation in artificial intelligence.

The discussion session, “Building a Sustainable System Adaptive to Demographic Shifts,” was moderated by renowned regional professors and experts. It delved into the implications of population aging on vital sectors such as labor, education, finance, and technology. Additionally, it emphasized the crucial connective role of the public-private sector in establishing effective cooperation mechanisms.

The discussion featured the participation of prominent regional professors and experts from Japan, South Korea, and Thailand.

During the discussion, ACB’s Chairman emphasized that demographic shifts are not a distant future trend but are already shaping Vietnam’s economic and social landscape. As a leading commercial bank, ACB recognizes the profound impact of these shifts on three critical areas: the labor market, with a shrinking workforce and increasing demand for new skills; education, with a focus on lifelong learning; and finance, undergoing changes in saving, borrowing, and investment behaviors. He suggested that financial institutions can go beyond mere response and instead proactively seize opportunities by fostering small and medium-sized enterprises, supporting women’s entrepreneurship, expanding inclusive finance through digital innovation, and integrating financial education into service platforms.

The program was held alongside the Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM3) in South Korea.

Furthermore, he proposed that the financial system should be designed not just for “economic cycles” but for the “life cycles” of individuals. This entails accompanying customers through their journeys—from their student days to entrepreneurship, career development, and retirement—by offering tailored products, services, and solutions for each life stage. He also highlighted the bank’s connective role in bridging the public and private sectors through skill retraining programs, supporting mobile welfare benefits, and investing in inclusive growth areas such as green energy, women-led enterprises, and rural economics, which ACB has been actively pursuing.

From a regional cooperation perspective, Mr. Huy suggested that APEC could enhance its effectiveness by harmonizing digital identity standards, recognizing skills across economies, and sharing successful financial education models. These steps would foster cross-border collaboration to collectively address demographic challenges.

Banks: Catalysts for Ecosystem Development

As the first Vietnamese enterprise invited to participate and deliver a speech at the APEC PPD, ACB not only shared practical insights into the financial and banking sector but also contributed a long-term approach to adapting to societal changes. ACB’s involvement underscored the message that banks are more than just capital providers; they are connective infrastructure that translates policies into concrete actions. In the context of Vietnam and many APEC economies facing aging populations and labor shifts, banks serve as a crucial intersection between the public and private sectors, facilitating inclusive financial solutions, enhancing skills, and expanding development opportunities for all generations.

ACB has consistently demonstrated its commitment to public-private collaboration, actively contributing to the realization of political resolutions such as Resolution 57 and Resolution 68 of the Politburo. The bank has forged a strategic partnership with the University of Ho Chi Minh City to establish a sustainable innovation ecosystem and launched a preferential credit package of VND 40,000 billion to support small and medium-sized enterprises in their digital transformation, sustainable development, and market expansion journeys. These initiatives not only propel policy implementation but also reinforce ACB’s role in accompanying the government and business community in driving the country’s economic growth.

This also aligns with ACB’s strategic orientation of integrating ESG into its business operations, not as a trend but as a core operating culture. ACB is dedicated to walking alongside the community, listening to its needs, and taking substantive action to create sustainable value for all stakeholders.