Vietcombank blames outdated technology for unpaid interest

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Earlier, the State Audit inspected Vietcombank’s 2015 financial statement and reported that from 2001 to now all the compound interest of current deposits that are smaller than VND1,000 (4.4 US cent) or 0.1 of a foreign currency have not been counted.

With about 9.53 million current deposit accounts in 2015, Vietcombank only paid the correct interest to about 30 per cent of the accounts. The remaining 6,692,027 accounts did not receive the correct interest. The missing amount is VND9.7 billion ($428,500).

Vietcombank’s press release in the evening of March 3 denied that this problem was on purpose. The bank said that the interest calculation software bought from its foreign partner in 1998 rounds down compound interests smaller than $0.1 by default.

In reality, most current deposit accounts have tens of VND of compound interest a month.

Vietcombank added that in international norms and in Vietnam, some banks collect fees to keep accounts with small balance to compensate for management costs, while Vietcombank has not even done that.

Vietcombank said it has been continuously upgrading its 1998 system and fixed this problem as soon as it was called to attention.

At the moment, the biggest shareholder of Vietcombank is the government with 77.11 per cent. The second is Japanese strategic partner Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. with 15 per cent. Other shareholders include domestic and foreign individuals and organisations, holding a total of 7.89 per cent. As reported by global media, as of January 17, Singapore’s GIC has yet to receive regulatory approval for its purchase of a 7.7 per cent stake, though the deal should have been closed by the end of 2016.

In 2016, Vietcombank reported a net profit of VND6.845 trillion ($302.3 million) on VND18.5 trillion ($817 million) revenue from interest.

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