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| Shinhan Bank CEO Wi Sung-ho, left, poses with Ringier Vietnam CEO Emre Sigura after forging strategic ties to provide Shinhan's mortgage services via Ringier's Muabannhadat real estate app at Shinhan Bank Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, Thursday. Courtesy of Shinhan Bank |
By Park Hyong-ki
Shinhan Bank Vietnam has forged strategic partnerships with mobile platform operators there in an effort to further boost its digital business and service.
The Vietnamese branch of Shinhan Bank said Friday it will be marketing and offering credit card services via Zalo, the region's most used mobile messenger. Some 100 million people use the application developed by VNG Corp., a local tech company, it noted.
The bank has also joined hands with Muabannhadat, the second-largest Vietnam-based platform that introduces real estate properties for purchase and rent.
Shinhan will begin marketing and offering its mortgages via the real estate app owned by Ringier Media Group headquartered in Switzerland.
Last but not least, it said the bank will provide its lending services to the Vietnamese through Momo, a mobile payment startup.
Last April, Shinhan Bank in Seoul established business ties with Momo in mobile overseas money transfers, enabling Vietnamese here to wire money via the app to their families back home without opening an account, the Korean bank noted.
Momo's shareholders include Standard Chartered Private Equity and Goldman Sachs. The private equity and venture capital arms of the two global financial companies invested a combined total of $28 billion in the startup last March, according to the foreign press.
"We seek to further expand our ties by sharing and using the technologies of big data analysis and artificial intelligence, and further extend our reach into other nearby countries such as Indonesia," a Shinhan Bank spokesman said.
Shinhan Bank Vietnam has 30 branches in the country, and is the largest foreign-invested financial company there.
It has mainly sought to expand through an inorganic growth strategy since it first opened its office in Ho Chi Minh City in 1993.
"We can say the bank's acquisition of ANZ Bank's Vietnamese retail operations has put it on the map," said the Shinhan spokesman.
Following Shinhan Bank Vietnam's acquisition in December 2017, its total assets amounted to about $3.3 billion, with about 1,400 employees. About 90 percent of them are Vietnamese, the Seoul-based bank noted.
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