Deposits at Vietnamese banks reach record high of $628 billion

Despite low interest rates, bank deposits have reached a new historic peak of VND16 quadrillion ($628.5 billion) as of the end of March, according to the latest data from the central bank.

Of this amount, citizens’ deposits reached an unprecedented over VND6.68 quadrillion, a rise of VND39 trillion from February and VND2.2 trillion from the end of 2023.

Meanwhile, corporate deposits dropped VND3.1 quadrillion to VND6.6 quadrillion.

The reversal of declining interest rates, which began in March last year, has led many banks to start to raise deposit interest rates since May.

Analysts expect a rise in deposit interest rates by 0.5 to 1 percentage point, reaching around 7% per year in the second half of the year.

However, the rates are unlikely to return to the high levels seen at the end of 2022, following a bank-run incident that resulted in a private lender being placed under central bank control.

Credit growth has only reached 2.4 this year, failing to meet the targets of 5% for the first half and 15% for the entire year, which analysts attribute to a sluggish real estate market.

The local real estate sector has experienced a significant downturn, leading to major developers facing challenges in repaying debt, including bond interest and principal, due to liquidity constraints and decreasing property values.

The situation escalated at the end of 2022, following the arrest of Truong My Lan, chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat group, who is on death row for multiple financial frauds. The arrest was part of Vietnam’s anti-corruption campaign, which intensified in late 2021.

Private commercial banks have been lifting their deposit rates this month to attract capital and notably, some of them have increased their rates more than twice.

Eximbank has increased rates for deposits of 6-9 months to 4.5% per year, 0.2 percentage points higher.

The bank also increased rates on June 7-17. Deposit rates at Eximbank are around 3.5-5.2% per year.

TPBank, NCB and OceanBank also hiked rates twice in June, with increases of 0.2-0.4 percentage points depending on terms.

From the beginning of this month, more than 20 commercial banks have increased deposit rates, of which nine raised rates more than once.

Banks started to raise rates at the end of March and the trend has continued in recent months. However, banks which raise rates are mainly private commercial banks, while the big four including Vietcombank, BIDV, VietinBank and Agribank are still keeping their deposit at record lows.

Statistics of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) showed that deposits at credit institutions rose by 2.2% to reach an estimated VND6.7 quadrillion by the end of March, although at the time deposit rates were, for most terms, at record lows.

Experts said that deposits at banks increased in the context that other investment channels are considered to be unpredictable, unstable and have low profit prospects.

According to Vietcombank Securities Company, deposits are tending to increase gradually from the bottom. Deposit rates can increase by 0.5-1 percentage points per year, but it will be difficult to see any race for rate hikes in the market.