Banks in Vietnam required to list suspect accounts for better supervision

Commercial banks must provide information on accounts that show possible signs of fraud, swindling, or law violations at the State Bank of Vietnam's (SBV) request every month.

The regulation was under the SBV’s newly issued Circular 17/2024/TT-NHNN regulating the opening and use of payment accounts at credit institutions.

Under the circular, banks are responsible for providing information on customers' payment accounts according to the SBV's instructions.

The information needs to include the customer information file, identification number, identification type, full name, date of birth, gender, nationality, account number, the date of account opening, the phone number registered for electronic banking services, along with the reason for any suspicions, account status and identification information of the suspected individual customers.

Banks must send information via the SBV’s information system on supporting the management, monitoring, and prevention of fraud risks in payment activities before the tenth day of each month.

Information is provided electronically according to the SBV's technical connection instructions.

Currently, the Ministry of Public Security’s Department of Cyber Security and High-Tech Crime Prevention (A05) has deployed a solution to establish an online connection information system with commercial banks and payment intermediary organisations. From there, information about suspected fake and fraudulent accounts from the police will be sent to banks so that transactions on online channels can be suspended immediately.

In order to promptly control and detect accounts with signs of fraud and law violations, banks have built a contact centre system to receive customer feedback, an anti-money laundering system, and a separate fraud prevention system.

In addition, banks have also applied many methods and different levels of response to suspicious accounts. If the authorities identify the account as having committed a violation, transactions on the online channel will be blocked.

In case new accounts only show signs of suspicion, banks will not block the transactions on the online channels but will request re-identification of the accounts to ensure that the accounts are owned honestly and can identify the owner as the person who makes the transactions for future investigation.

Military Bank (MB) and A05 have so far updated the list of all accounts that participated in or were related to fraud nationwide. The list now has 3,500 black accounts, an increase of 500 accounts compared to the end of July, with the listings continuously updated.

According to Vu Thanh Trung, Vice Chairman of the MB’s Board of Directors in charge of digital transformation, it is just a list of suspected accounts, including both fraudulent accounts and suspicious accounts.

Trung said the MB has clearly warned customers before transferring money to accounts that are on the suspected list. In July 2024 alone, the bank warned 2,700 customers, and after receiving the warnings, 1,500 customers proactively stopped their transactions.