Home Credit hit FinanceAsia’s high-profile prize

In Asia region, this year, FinanceAsia just granted the award Best Deal for ten institutions of ten markets including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines. Home Credit Vietnam was honoured to be the only financial institution of Vietnam receiving this prestigious prize.

The prize was granted to the loan contract between Home Credit Vietnam and three other foreign banks. The $50-million syndicated loan with the term of three years was granted by three banks of Credit Suisse AG Singapore branch, MayBank Labuan Branch in Malaysia, and VietinBank Germany Branch. According to FinanceAsia, this is a precedent-setting and first-time deal in Vietnam as foreign banks funded a foreign-owned finance company in Vietnam.

Earlier, finance companies like Home Credit just rely on their parent company funding. However, this time, Credit Suisse structured a security collateralisation on Home Credit’s domestic assets, allowing them to access borrowing from domestic banks having abroad branches like VietinBank, which was never previously possible for consumer finance companies under local law.

When granting this award to Home Credit Vietnam, FinanceAsia said though being relatively small compared with other submissions in this category, at $50 million, the innovative transaction provided a new channel for consumer finance companies in Vietnam to raise capital. For this reason, FinanceAsia’s editorial team has chosen Home Credit Vietnam to receive the “Best Vietnam Deal 2015”.

Since the loan for Home Credit Vietnam made in October 2015, Credit Suisse has claimed that it had been mandated by two additional Vietnam-based consumer finance lenders, in deals that would settle in the next two months. This provided evidence that the initial innovation of the deal was recognised as viable and more desirable financial structure for this sector.