HDBank to choose life insurer partner for upcoming exclusive bancassurance deal

HDBank will choose a life insurance partner for an exclusive bancassurance deal

At the bank’s general shareholders meeting in April, HDBank’s vice chairwoman Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao said that the bank has received a lot of attention recently for an exclusive bancassurance agreement.

“Many international life insurance companies have offered to cooperate with HDBank, but the negotiation has not been completed due to the pandemic,” said Thao. “However, we are not under any pressure to sign an exclusive bancassurance deal at the moment because the contract value in 2021 or next year would be significant.”

Last year, some major lenders have entered the bancassurance competition by co-operating with life insurers. For instance, ACB inked a monopoly deal with Sun Life and VietinBank teamed up with Manulife.

Despite the adverse impacts of the pandemic, the bank reported its pre-tax revenue of VND5.818 trillion($252.96 million) last year, equivalent to an increase of 15.9 per cent on-year.

In the first quarter of this year, HDBank recorded VND2.1 trillion ($91.3 million), up more than 68 per cent on-year.

The bank is accelerating its digitally-led services with its “Di HDBank” application. Moreover, a majority of the bank’s customers have conducted online transactions on the HDBank digital banking platform via its Electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) implementation.

Pham Quoc Thanh, general director of HDBank, said that since the last quarter of 2020, the bank has reinforced insurance cross-selling initiatives, with many positive performances in return. The bank sets a target this year to collect VND1 trillion ($43.5 million) of insurance service fees.

“Revenue from insurance services is an attractive promise for us in order to diversify our sources of income while reducing reliance on revenue from lending activities,” added Thanh.