Vietnam PM requests review of virtual securities accounts, early market status upgrade

The Ministries of Finance and Public Security must join hands to review investor data before cleaning up at securities companies to improve stock market safety, requested Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in a dispatch signed on Wednesday.

The government leader had previously ordered the State Securities Commission, the stock market watchdog under the finance ministry, to connect the national population database to clean up data of securities investors in November.

After a series of months recording hundreds of thousands of new accounts, for the first time the market witnessed a net decrease of more than 377,000 accounts in October, according to the Vietnam Securities Depository and Clearing Corporation (VSDC).

In the month, only 167,659 new accounts were opened but the number of accounts removed reached 545,386, with 99% at MBBank Securities (MBS), it said, adding that besides MBS, no other securities company has proactively announced the results of their review.

As of October 31, there were 7.45 million accounts at 76 securities companies, of which 99.7% were held by individuals. Since the beginning of the year, the number of closed accounts has tended to increase due to the regulation that each investor can only open one account at one securities firm.

The previously loose account requirements had led to some people hiring or asking others to buy and sell stocks in their names, creating fake supply and demand in the market, and inflating prices to gain illegal profits. Typical cases are Trinh Van Quyet and his accomplices with FLC-related stocks, Do Thanh Nhan and Tri Viet Securities with the Louis Holdings-related stocks, and Nguyen Do Lang and his accomplices with the stocks of the APEC ecosytem.

In the dispatch, the prime minister assessed that the international financial and monetary markets will see many complex, unpredicted fluctuations, affecting the capital, currency and stock markets.

For the safe and transparent market development, he requested solutions to soon upgrade the Vietnamese stock market from “frontier” to “emerging,” aiming to attract foreign investment capital and investment funds.

Vietnam is classified as a frontier market by two global index providers - MSCI, which stands for Morgan Stanley Capital International, and FTSE Russell, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group.

In its latest review in September, FTSE Russell kept Vietnam on the watch list for a possible reclassification from frontier to secondary emerging market status due to a failure to meet the settlement requirements.

“The Ministry of Finance must closely monitor domestic and international developments and capital flows to prevent risks,” he said, adding it must review policies, supervise and strictly handle violations, enhance the quality of products on the stock market, as well as improve the operational efficiency of market members, securities companies, and fund management firms.

He also noted investor diversification in the direction of attracting the participation of institutional investors, professional investors, and funds. For individual investors, he required regulators to proactively provide them with information and training on financial-securities knowledge.

The Ministry of Public Security was assigned to coordinate with the Ministry of Finance and the State Securities Commission to take measures to prevent and strictly handle cyberattacks, account hacking, fraud, and appropriation of investors' money in cyberspace.

Vietnam's benchmark VN-Index on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange slipped 0.37% to 1,110.13 points on Thursday with the majority of blue chips in negative territory.