South Korea’s Shinhan Bank has been extraordinarily successful in Vietnam, topping the credit card issues among foreign lenders through fast localization and customization in services.

In the Vietnamese credit card market, Shinhan Vietnam Bank ranked first among foreign banks and seventh in the entire banks. It tops in terms of the amount of money it handles for corporate credit cards. Thanks to the burgeoning credit card unit, it raked in 56.5 billion won ($49 million) in net profit last year, more than doubling from the previous year’s 22.1 billion won.

The biggest factor behind its successful business in Vietnam is its localization strategy. “We hire local people and sell financial products that are tailor-made for the customers there,” said Kim Jae-joon from the company. “We have been familiarizing with local people and business environment without much problem because of cultural similarity of Korea and Vietnam,” he added.

In 2011 Shinhan Bank boldly ventured into Vietnam whose financial sector had been largely underdeveloped. Shinhan Vietnam Bank first targeted Korean people as other banks operating overseas businesses did before. It only had 4,500 customers and handled $2 million at the time.

It started to hire local people to market its credit card in 2013. Locals account for 90 percent of credit card customer base. The number of customers using Shinhan cards increased almost 30-fold to 160,000 as of late June this year, and the amount of money it handles soared to about $66 million.

The popularity of Sunny Club, mobile banking and contents providing service it launched late last year has also contributed much to the company’s impressive performance in Vietnam. The service has been well received in the country as the number of users exceeded 20,000 threshold last month.

By Chung Ji-sung

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]