State Bank of Vietnam to draft implementing decree and circulars for proposed international financial centres

At a conference on building a financial centre in Vietnam, State Bank of Vietnam Deputy Governor Pham Tien Dung said the central bank will draft a government decree and detailed circulars to guide implementation of a planned National Assembly resolution on establishing international financial centres, expected to be considered at the National Assembly’s May 2025 session. The emerging framework would require participants to be legal entities registered in the centres and would specify what activities are permitted and prohibited, including how banks, securities firms, insurers, investment funds and asset managers may operate and how their Vietnam and international activities are delineated. Policymakers are considering either applying existing Vietnamese law where services are similar to those offered outside the centres, or placing centre-based institutions under a common regime set by the National Assembly resolution, which could allow free foreign-exchange trading inside the centres even though this is not permitted outside. The drafting committee expects foreign bank branches, wholly foreign-owned banks and subsidiary banks of Vietnamese credit institutions to be eligible to register to operate in the centres, citing the difficulty of a domestic credit institution operating under two legal regimes. The draft decree is to be made public to gather feedback from foreign banks and other participating entities, and the policy work also flagged the need to clarify the regulatory approach for fintech models such as large-scale consumer applications in addition to bank-partnered eKYC providers.