Banks to continually cut costs to aid COVID-19 affected firms
Kinh tế - Ngày đăng : 15:37, 12/08/2020
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Under a directive released late last week, the SBV said banks must also cut
salary, bonus and profit to further reduce the net lending interest rate for
both existing and new loans, which it expected to contribute to the recovery of
local production and business in the post-pandemic period.
As the COVID-19 pandemic remains unpredictable, banks have been also directed to
promptly update official information on new developments of the pandemic to
proactively formulate and apply appropriate response scenarios to ensure the
banking system, especially the information technology and payment units, operate
safely and smoothly.
Many banks have recently planned to stop recruiting and lower staff salaries to
save costs. Vietnam Prosperity Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VPBank) in the first
half of the year cut more than 4,200 employees. VPBank’s general director Nguyen
Duc Vinh said at the bank’s annual general meeting that the bank would strive to
restructure, cut costs and increase productivity this year.
Similarly, at Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB), the workforce was cut
from 15,691 to 14,969 people.
Sai Gon Thuong Tin Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Sacombank) also reduced its
workforce, restructured its apparatus, and cut nearly 600 employees in the first
half of this year to nearly 18,640.
For Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TPBank), after increasing the number
of employees in the first four months of 2020, the bank said it would stop
recruiting new employees and not increase salaries for employees this year. In
the current difficult context, it was necessary to reduce costs and increase
productivity in order to meet the development needs.
Representative of Petrolimex Group Commercial Joint Stock Bank (PGBank) also
said that the bank would not recruit more staff in 2020 and would restructure
its existing inefficient transaction offices.
Saigon Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB) said leaders and senior officials
of the bank had reduced their salaries by 50 percent voluntarily until the
announcement of the end of the pandemic.
Since April, HCM City Development Commercial Joint Stock Bank (HDBank) has also
lowered business salary by 10-25 percent, applicable to employees with a total
salary of 10 million VND monthly or more, to cope with the complex situation of
the pandemic.
According to the second quarter recruitment report for middle and high-level
personnel in the Vietnamese market released by headhunters firm Navigos Search,
banks are still in the process of reviewing operating costs, leading to the fact
that recruitment demand has slowed down and has not shown signs of resuming,
particularly for the high-level personnel segment.
Source: VNA