On October 24, 2019 in Da Nang, the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) organized VIETSWIFT 2019 Annual Meeting under the chairmanship of Mr. Nguyen Van Anh, Director General of the SBV Central Banking Department cum Chairman of VIETSWIFT. Also attending the meeting were Ms. Le Dieu Hong, representative of SWIFT in Vietnam, Mr. Hyundong Lee, Specialist & Head of SWIFT solutions design team, and representatives from the SBV entities and several commercial banks.
Speaking at the meeting, Mr. Nguyen Van Anh, Chairman of VIETSWIFT, highly appreciated and thanked SWIFT for its cooperation and support for the SBV and its members in Vietnam to get access to and learn the experience in international payment operations, improving the operational efficiency of the SWIFT system in Vietnam.
Mr. Nguyen Van Anh, Director General of the SBV Central Banking Department cum Chairman of VIETSWIFT, speaks at the Meeting
The Chairman of VIETSWIFT emphasized that a rapid change in technology and high requirements for fintech applications in the digital era have been making remarkable influence on the operations of the credit institutions, especially in the field of payments and international settlements. However, the assurance of security and safety, and anti-cybercrime are also crucial elements, and may have strong impacts on the reputation and operational results of the credit institutions. Therefore, the Chairman of VIETSWIFT required the credit institutions to enhance their compliance with the requirements for international payment operations, such as the Customer Security Program (CSP), meeting the requirements of SWIFT Global Payments Innovation (SWIFT gpi), ISO 2022, KYC-SA, etc. He also stated that the SBV would enhance the compliance monitoring related to the CSP, and the operational reports in order to ensure the efficient and safe operations of the international payment system.
The Meeting was updated on the membership status and the payment activities through SWIFT in 2019; the activities implemented in 2019. Especially, the Chairman of VIETSWIFT shared many encouraging results of VIETSWIFT from his participation at Sibos 2019 Conference in London, the United Kingdom, which attracted more than 11,000 participants all over the world. The Meeting also agreed on a plan for implementing the activities and the orientations for SWIFT development in 2019.
Some participants at the Meeting
Currently, Vietnam ranks 15th in the Asia Pacific region, 54th out of SWIFT countries in the world in terms of transfer volume. By the end of June 2019, the total transfer volume reached 8.34 million transactions, of which the number of outbound transactions was 4.24 million (up by 14.3% over the same period of 2018); the inbound transactions was nearly 4.1 million (up by 8.6% over the same period of 2018). The credit institutions are using SWIFT as a key instrument in international payments.
At the Meeting, the experts from SWIFT in Asia and Southeast Asia provided updates on the implementation results of the Customer Security Programme (CSP) and the Payment Control Solution (PCS). They also presented a number of SWIFT new products, as well as the status and roadmap of applying ISO 20022. They also provided updates on SWIFT SR2020 standards and SWIFT latest initiatives about the readiness of banks when enterprises get direct connection with SWIFT, etc.
Moreover, in order to renovate the operations of VIETSWIFT, the specialists also updated on the implementation of SWIFT Global Payment Innovation Initiative (SWIFT gpi), which is considered as a revolution in the international payments based on the innovations and application of IT. SWIFT gpi provides services that allow banks to make payments globally at a faster speed, most of which are completed within a day, and also allowing tracking of the status of the online payments, especially the cross-border payment transactions in a quick, transparent manner. It is also very easy to track the payment flow, search for information, etc.
SWIFT introduced this service in 2016. Up to now in Vietnam, there have been five banks implementing SWIFTgpi (namely VCB, Vietinbank, BIDV, MB and ABBank), and two other banks have registered for implementation (ACB and HDBank).
Le Hang