IFC approves $100 mln loan to enhance SeABank housing loans

The World Bank’s investment arm IFC has agreed a $100 million senior loan with five years in tenor to SeABank, with the proceeds to be exclusively used for the Vietnamese lender’s housing portfolio, including affordable housing.

The new funding is from the global investment firm’s own account, and the Hanoi-headquartered lender will provide these housing loans to individuals, according to an IFC disclosure seen on Sunday.

Established in 1994, SeABank provides a wide range of commercial banking products and services to both retail and commercial clients through a nationwide network of 174 branches as of June 30, 2022.

It is the 12th largest private bank in Vietnam with total assets of $9.9 billion, operating across 29 provinces serving more than two million customers as of that day, according to the IFC disclosure.

The main common shareholders as of March 31, 2022 were vice chairwoman Nguyen Thi Nga and her related persons. The remaining shares are owned by institutional investors and individual investors. It is listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange as SSB.

SeABank early this January appointed French national Loic Faussier as its new CEO for a two-year period. The 50-year-old man has master’s degrees in finance and business law, and has worked for more than 25 years at major financial institutions and banks in France, Hong Kong, Japan, and Vietnam, including such positions as CEO of HSBC Vietnam, vice head of HSBC Japan, and deputy CEO of Vietnam International Bank (VIB). He also served as Deputy Financial Attaché of the Chamber of Commerce at the Embassy of France in Beijing and worked for Citibank in Paris.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, SeABank received a five-year convertible loan of $75 million from IFC to support its growth and increase targeted lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises, and a $200 million loan from U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to support women-owned SMEs and for climate financing.

In the third quarter, the lender completed increasing its charter capital by 6.6% to VND19,809 billion ($820.2 million).

Real estate experts believe that affordable housing and social housing will rally this year as buying these products is real demand while many developers have been ignoring the segment over the past few years as they have focused on just mid-level and high-class segments, where the purchasing power is much weaker than in the budget segment.

According to Ho Chi Minh City Department of Construction data, 25 residential projects in the city were eligible to mobilize capital for development in 2022, with a total of 12,147 apartments and houses. However, the high-end segment made up 78.3% of the total, the mid-end segment accounted for 21.7%. The two made 100%, leaving 0% to the budget segment.

In three consecutive years from 2020, social housing supply was very tidy while the two higher-level segments have been overwhelming, the department’s data shows.