Saigon – Hanoi Bank (SHB) has just been honored with 3 prestigious international awards by The Asian Banking and Finance (ABF) magazine, namely: “Vietnam Domestic COVID Management Initiative of the year 2021” – wholesale banking category; “Corporate Social Responsibility & Green program of the year 2021” and “Bank for Women initiative of the year 2021” – retail banking category. These prestigious awards have reflected the Bank’s continuous and proactive efforts in adapting over the past years, and at the same time affirming its strong financial foundation, safe operation, and sustainable development; affirming the principle of “Serving from the heart”, always ready to innovate, contributing to creating sustainable values for the community.

The Asian Banking and Finance is one of Asia’s leading magazines, founded in 2008, the annual wholesale and retail banking awards system honored by ABF are prestigious awards, a recognition of banking experts and financial community towards banks with outstanding regional and national performance. The ABF Magazine Awards Ceremony in 2021 marks the 7th consecutive time that SHB has been honored with several prominent awards, recognizing the bank’s efforts in business development and responsibility to the community.

With the motto “Serving from the heart”, SHB always proactively adapts and is ready to innovate with the goal of empowering the community to overcome difficulties caused by the pandemic, contributing to the country’s socio-economic development, creating sustainable value.

In 2020 and 2021, in the context of the whole country’s economy being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with various outstanding initiatives, joining hands with the community to overcome difficulties, SHB was honored by ABF as a bank with Best “COVID Management Initiative of the year”. Specifically, for corporate customers, the bank has effectively implemented different solutions to support businesses such as: continuously deploying credit packages with a total scale of nearly VND 33 trillion and many impressive incentives for customers in terms of lending interest rates and service fees; implementing loan restructuring, loan rescheduling, maintaining loan groups, as well as exempting and reducing interest and fees for customers facing difficulties due to the impact of the epidemic as prescribed in Circular 01/2020/TT-NHNN; supporting input and output markets for businesses; providing domestic and international market information along with preferential and supportive policies of the State to enterprises; providing free consulting services on corporate finance and business restructuring to help customers overcome difficulties, etc.

For individual customers, SHB waives and drastically reduces most transaction fees in order to maximize customer support. With the goal of maintaining business continuity to serve the essential needs of the people, SHB strictly adheres to the regulations on Covid-19 prevention and control at business units, ensuring ATM and e-banking system 24/7 smooth services, helping customers to perform transaction safely, conveniently and quickly. In addition, SHB promotes e-banking services and encourages customers to make non-cash payments. Contributing to changing the transaction habits of customers, SHB has implemented many preferential programs for customers transacting through online channels; ensuring fast, easy and safe transactions during the epidemic season. With a series of drastic solutions deployed synchronously, SHB wishes to accompany customers and the community to overcome difficulties caused by the pandemic, contributing to promoting the country’s socio-economic development.

In the category of “Corporate Social Responsibility & Green program of the year”, SHB stands out as one of the private joint stock commercial banks with the largest loan balance for green projects in the whole system, totaling up to VND 9,761 billion by the end of 2020. With the advantage of being 1 among 4 commercial banks participating in the disbursement of REDP projects funded by WB since 2014, SHB is eligible to bring outstanding benefits to investors of Green projects. Most notably, from July 2020, SHB has launched a financing package for solar power projects, offering many impressive incentives to corporate customers: Loan term incentives (up to 15 years); Preferential interest rates (1%-1.5% lower than normal interest rates, depending on the type of business); Preferential security assets; loan value up to 70 – 100% of the value of collaterals… With the strategic orientation to maintain the top 1 position among the private commercial joint stock banks in terms of green credit, SHB has,currently and will focus on growing outstanding loans for renewable energy projects, joining hands in implementing the National Action Plan on green growth.

For the award category of “Bank for women initiative of the year”, The Jury highly appreciated SHB for its efforts to facilitate women-led SMEs to access bank loans with many special incentives to minimize the impact of Covid – 19. Specifically, SHB is one of five banks participating in the “Preferential loan program for women-led small and medium-sized enterprises” signed between the Government of Vietnam and ADB, accompanying female leaders to overcome difficulties due to the pandemic with a support package of USD 5 million funded by ADB. Accordingly, SHB quickly and promptly helped female-owned enterprises access low-cost capital; impressive interest rates from only 5.85%; support for 6 months of interest and free loan structuring; exemption from banking service fees; organize training classes, consulting programs with the participation of leading experts… Through the program, SHB hoped to help women-led businesses maximize their potential in contributing to the country’s socio-economic development.

Also recently, SHB was honored by Vietnam Report Joint Stock Company (Vietnam Report) as the Top 10 Most Prestigious Joint Stock Commercial Banks for the 6th time in a row. With an effort to carry out a comprehensive transformation, always making a difference in order to dramatically accelerate, improve business efficiency, and grow profits, SHB’s business performance report for the second quarter of 2021 has recorded many positive results. Important financial indicators grew impressively over the same period and closely followed the plan set out by the General Meeting of Shareholders. As of June 30, 2021, SHB’s total assets reached VND 458 trillion, up 11% compared to the beginning of the year and completing 99.5% of the plan set by the General Meeting of Shareholders; Own capital reached VND 40,425 billion; Charter capital reached VND 19,260 billion; outstanding credit balance reached VND 332 trillion, up 8.46% compared to the end of 2020; Capital mobilization reached VND 423 trillion, up 12.05% compared to 2020; Interest income reached more than VND 16,5 trillion, up VND 1.3 trillion over the same period. Accumulatively in the first 6 months, SHB achieved VND3,095 billion in pre-tax profit, up 86.5% over the same period. Thus, after several consecutive quarters of improvement, SHB’s return on equity (ROE) reached 24.3%, equivalent to the current leading performance index in the system of Vietnamese commercial banks.
Previously, SHB was continuously honored with many awards by prestigious domestic and foreign organizations for its initiatives that bring value to the community in the context of the pandemic. Most recently, SHB was honored by the 2021 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards system as “Golden Award for Co-branding Initiative in Community Sponsorship”; ABF honored as “Bank with the best customer support initiative 2020” and “Bank with the best strategic cooperation initiative 2020”, etc.

With continuous innovation efforts, focusing on customers, SHB has continuously been honored with important awards in the year by the Finance – Banking industry in particular and the whole economic sector of Vietnam in general, such as: “Top 50 fastest growth enterprises in Vietnam” and “Top 50 best enterprises in Vietnam” voted by Vietnam Report; 4 times honored by The Banker magazine as “Bank of the Year”, among many others.