IBM Smarter Computing at Saigon Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank

At IBM Technology Conference and Exhibition in Hanoi, IBM Corporation announced that Saigon
Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SBH), a commercial bank
in Vietnam, has turned to its systems and software to streamline business
processes across its IT infrastructure and enable broader client reach through
new online and mobile banking services.

With only 20% of Vietnam’s population currently holding bank
accounts, IBM Smarter Computing is helping Saigon Hanoi Commercial Joint
Stock Bank reach Vietnam’s unbanked with a new technology
infrastructure that supports more online and mobile services.

According to the State Bank of Vietnam, only 20% of Vietnam’s population holds
bank accounts, while the country’s labor force is over 50 million. At the end
of 2011 just 14% of transactions were non-cash. On the other hand, young
Internet-savvy consumers are a fast-growing group in Vietnam, which is creating
demand for new online and mobile banking services such as those included in
IBM’s recently announced portfolio of MobileFirst solutions.

To tap this growth potential in retail banking, SHB has been expanding rapidly,
growing to 5,000 employees at 317 branches, including two in Laos and Cambodia.
In addition to its traditional full-service banking experience for
individual and corporate customers, the bank is looking to launch new online
and mobile-enabled services. As part of this initiative, the bank also designed
a special offer branded ‘S-Double Account’ – offering a variety of new online
services including payroll services, credit card insurance, loan applications
and overdraft protection to clients.

"SHB places special emphasis on the
role of technology in transforming operations and enabling growth, especially
after the important acquisition of Habubank in 2012. Our rapid growth in recent
years caused an exponential increase in the data we operate with,"
said Nguyen Van Le, CEO of SHB. "We
realized that if we want to launch innovative services to new client segments,
while at the same time adhering to compliance regulations, we have to be able
to manage much more data-intensive transactions and analyze that data in real
time to improve customer service. The IT infrastructure we adopted in 2010 from
other IT companies was imposing limits in the way we wanted to work with our
data."

As part of SHB’s business strategy ‘Competition by
Differentiation’ making the best use of investment opportunities,
IBM provided SHB with a solution composed of IBM Power Systems servers, IBM System Storage and IBM Tivoli software. The solution helped SHB streamline its
IT infrastructure management, consolidate data flows and provided the bank with
a single view of clients and data. By automating several pieces of the
financial process the bank was able to launch its ‘S-Double Account,’ together with some new online and mobile-based
services, such as loan application, appointment booking, and bill payment.

"Our Smarter Computing portfolio is
about solutions designed for the data, working in a software-defined
environment, and doing so in an open and collaborative way," says
Nguyen Kim Hoa, country manager, system and technology group, IBM Vietnam.
"We help companies and governments
around the world and in Vietnam to adopt smarter computing systems which use
intelligence to drive operational efficiencies and optimize workloads,
concurrently reducing costs. The solution implemented by SHB helped them
introduce new innovative online and mobile banking services to new client
segments."