SOLVAY-BRUSSELS SCHOOL OF NATIONAL ECONOMICS ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT UNIVERSITY Vietnam – Belgium Master Programmes MASTERS IN BUSINESS MANAGEMENT THESIS Formulate Strategy for Techcombank Retail Banking Supervised by: Associate Prof. Ngo Kim Thanh Prepared by: Nguyen Van Van – MBM7 Hanoi, October 2010 Acknowledgements I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my research supervisor, Ms. Ngo Kim Thanh, for her intensive support, valuable suggestions, guidance and encouragement during the course of my study. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of my teachers at Solvay Business School and National Economics University for their teaching and guidance during my course.
I would like to extend my thanks to the board of managers and my colleagues at Techcombank for their support and assistance during my research study. I am very thankful to all individuals for providing me with the necessary information and supporting me with advice during the period of my data collection for this research study. Last but not least, I would like to express my loving thanks to my parents, my wife, my sister for their love and encouragement throughout my studying. The importance of the research.
Scope of Limitation. Structure of Thesis. 12 Chapter 2 – Literature Review. Corporate strategy & role of corporate strategy in organization.
Corporate strategy formulation.14 Chapter 3 – Research Methodology.26 Chapter 4 – Research analysis. The societal environment (PEST Analysis). Banking industry analysis (Five Forces Analysis).3 Opportunities and Threats. Techcombank internal environment analysis.
Vision, Mission and Goals. Recommendations in Detail. 68 Chapter 6: Conclusion, limitation and further researches.72 3 Table of figures Figure 1: Breakdown of staff graduate.10 Figure 2: Vietnam Inflation.31 Figure 3: Vietnam GDP.32 Figure 4: Organizational Chart of Techcombank.40 Figure 5: personal customer deposits (BLN VND).43 Figure 6: Breakdown of personal customer deposits.43 Figure 7: Retail outstanding loans (BLN VND).44 Figure 8: Number of issued card in 2009.45 Figure 9: Payment turnover via POS (VND BLN).46 Figure 10: Structure of coporate customers.47 Figure 11: Deposits by economic institution (BLN VND).48 Figure 12: Customer service circle.64 4 List of tables Table 1: Corporate strategy formulation process.15 Table 2: SWOT/ TOWS matrix.22 Table 3: Opportunities and Threats of Techcombank.38 Table 4: Number of branches.40 Table 5: Charter Capital of Techcombank.40 Table 6: Finalcial Highlights.49 Table 7: Strengths and Weakness.55 Table 8: SWOT/TOWS matrix of Techcombank.56 Table 9: Timeline for Recommendations of Techcombank retail banking.68 5 Executive Summary Today, integration into the world economic is the general trend of developing countries to approach the developed countries economic. For Vietnam, global integration is a right and important direction which is the premise for making Vietnam economic grows fast and stable.
However, global integration also makes Vietnamese companies, especially Join Stock Banks – which deal with monetary, finance, credit … business – facing with many challenges. To overcome these challenges and take full advantage of chance, Join Stock Banks must analyze their strength and weakness to bring out the suitable strategies for each period, phase of their development progress. According to State Bank statistical, there are only about 15 million bank accounts. It’s a very small amount in about 85 million Vietnamese people.
Therefore, foreign banks like ANZ, HSBC, Standard Chattered… are focusing on developing retails banking in Vietnam. International banks, only for retail banking, have thousands of products/services. But, local banks have very limited products/services, only about 200. The provision of new bank services is an internal requirement for local bank because, estimately, the cost for an ATM transaction is only 1/8 and an Internet transaction is only 1/12 in compare with traditional transaction (face to face).
"The best retail bank in Vietnam" title is the dream of many banks. In order to achieve this title, each bank has its own strategies. Taking advantage of the wide network, especially transaction offices, state-owned commercial banks have detailed plans to push sales in retail segment, in which focus on credit area. They are strengthening organisation structure and retail customer-relation staff and transforming the transaction offices to be official retail banking units.
In the near future, the retail service competition will have to delve into service quality. This creates pressures on banks to raise financial capacity, invest more in technology, and diversify services and finding more customers. Even though foreign banks currently still focus on high-level customers, in the long term, they 6 may push up service developments for lower income customers. The race in Vietnam retail banking would then become severer Techcombank, with its objective to be the best retail bank in Vietnam, has built its own strategy to obtain the proposed goal.
But, in the hard competition and unstable economic environment, bank strategy must be evaluated and adjusted to make it more effective and make the bank success on their target. Firstly, this study aims to review company’s business, finance statement and organization, to evaluate suitability of the current strategy in context of unstable changing environment. Valuating & Adjusting Strategy for Techcombank. Secondly, base on technical of Strategy Formulation process including SWOT and BCG analysis this study shall give out the suggestions to formulate Techcombank’s retail banking strategy in order to improve Weakness to reduce Threats from changing environment and to take full advantages of Strengths to catch Opportunities.
Background Since the economy changes from a command economy to a market-oriented economy, there has been a competition among companies to win more customers by providing better goods or services. Most of companies in Vietnam now become aware of the importance of “better taking care of customers” as one of their strategy to grow in the competitive market. Customer relation management activities therefore has been emphasized as a necessity for the existence and thrive of a company. Under pressure of the competition on providing bank services and the rapid growing of information technology, year 2010 is considered as a “explosion year” of retail banking services, intensification on approaching the personal customers and small enterprises.
Vietnam trade banks have been focused on modernization, applied new technology in to their systems to develop the retail market. When moving to the retail market, banks will have a larger market, development opportunities and disperse their business risks. Vietnamese population is estimated to increase to 88 million by this year with higher income. The average density of using bank service in Vietnam is about 15- 16%, higher in some big cities, about 32%.
Meanwhile, this density in Thailand or Malaysia is 70-80%. In next 10 year, the estimate grow speed of Vietnam retail banking is 30-40%. This show that retail banking in Vietnam is a potential market for trade banks. According to financial experts’ assessment, the competition among local trade banks are more and more severe to get their market share and attract customers.
Beside, as Vietnam joined WTO, the government must follow the agreement to open the bank industry to foreign banks. It will increase the number of foreign banks with strong financial power, diversified of services, new technologies and good management. Therefore, local banks will little by little lose their advantage on 8 scale, customers and distribution channels, especially after 2010, when most limitation for foreign banks are removed. In that context, local banks cannot base on their traditional advantage as previously and most of them identify to develop their retail banking services as an important part in their strategy.
The research object of this study is Techcombank – a local bank which has been founded in 1993. With its vision to become the best retail bank of Viet Nam, Techcombank is now serving about 600.000 individual customers, 25,000 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), providing many products and services to meet the particular needs of this customer group at various stages in their lives which ultimately supports business activities locally and internationally. The structure of business, together with changes in the world economy and the industry environment, has created difficulties and imposed threats on the company. This will be the main content of “Problem Statement”.
Problems Statement Currently, Techcombank has 2 main Banking services : personal banking services (retail banking service) and Corporate Banking services. Techcombank Board of Management want to use retail banking services are key product of the bank. But the size of the customers for this service is still very small, about 600.000, with the contribution only about 20% to total revenue. Techcombank Board of Management want to step up their retail banking services but they are on some difficulties.
Retail banking services are under many pressures from external environment forces as well as inside bank Macroeconomic issues such as political, economical, social and technology seems not create favorable conditions for the development of Retail Banking. Being the WTO member with many advantages but the fact shows that Retail Banking also have to cope with many difficulties such as the backward technology, lack of legal procedure, few services. Together with the serious lack of human resource, 9 management capacity, world economic turmoil in 2008, it is obvious that Retail Banking service in Vietnam in general also in Techcombank is facing many issues. Micro economic forces inside the Retail Banking sector also impact to the bank business.
The bank business structures still cumbersome and inflexible to adapt with the unstable economy environment and operate effectively. The human resource increase in quantity but not much in quality. The employees working skill, knowledge, professional are not fully meet the new requirements. From 2006 to 2009, the staff number increased from 1584 to 5028 while the ratio of staff hold a bachelor’s degree of higher only increase from 78% to 82%.
There is lack of policies to attract talented people to join and work for bank. Human resource structure is not rational and backward in compare with foreign bank’s standards. Figure 1: Breakdown of staff graduate Source: Annual reports The risk management and internal audit activities still very weak and ineffective. Financial report, accounting system and information management systems are not 10 comply with International standards.
Irrecoverable debt ratio still high despite of many effort to recover. Therefore, to improve its business, especially in retail banking sector, Techcombank should consider reviewing its business, developing plan under strategy view. Techcombank direction to be the best retail bank is only within 2 years from 2008 to 2009 and there has not been any clear strategy for the company for this sector. With the change in the world’s economic (short-term effect) and increasing in competition (long-term effect) which have very strong effects on bank’s retail business, there is an essential need to develop a strategy for bank on retail banking for the period of 2010 – 2015.
Research Objectives Below are objectives of the study: - Identify current missions, objectives, strategies of Techcombank retail banking - Analyze external & internal environment of Techcombank influence on its Retail Banking service - Base on the result of above researches, the study will suggest a suitable strategy for Techcombank retail banking service in the period 2010-2015. Research Questions Below are the research questions that the study aims at answering 1. What is the current mission, objectives, strategies of Techcombank? 2. What is the status of external & internal environment of Techcombank? Base on the environment analysis, point out what is the strong, weakness, opportunities, threats for the company? 3.
What should be the suitable strategy for Techcombank retail banking? I. The importance of the research Bank is growing too fast, the Bank’s Board of Management seem to ignore serious problems at the strategy level to flow target of growth as fast as 11 possible. Therefore, the outcomes of this study aim to warn them about the future risks as well as to support them to adjust the company’s strategy for more safe & stable statement in a changing environment. Scope of Limitation Because of the limitation of time and ability to get updated company’s information, this study just only focus on business activities of Techcombank in duration from 2004 to 2009.
Bank services are very various including personal banking (retail banking) and Corporate banking services.