How to Enter Financial Services Market in Vietnam

As the Vietnam economy continues to grow, financial services as well grows to keep up.  When most parts of the world were hit by global financial crisis in 2009, Vietnam was one of a few that enjoyed positive growth rate and HSBC in its Vietnam monitor issue volume 28 projected 7.2% growth in 2010.

The Vietnam financial market has been developing however still at immature stage.  The Vietnam stock market is one of the channel to raise capital for the development and it is getting more active, attracting investors from South East Astia.  There are more than one hundred securities companies founded to compete in the growing market in 2010.  Top ten companies control more than 50% of the market share in brokerage fee.  In the year 2008 and 2009, many companies have been suffering due to tough competition, poor management, bad market situation impacted by global financial crisis and lack of governance experience from Vietnam State Securities Commission.

According to World Trade Ornatization access commitments, the Vietnam securities company can be 100% owned by foreign firms by the year 2012.  The competition amongst players will be getting more fierce.  Japan is interested in acquiring Vietnam securities companies.

Financial services are typical products therefore owning some characteristics of its own kinds.  Consumer purchasing behaviour is greatly influenced by the type of financial product being purchased.  The emphasis of trust and having relationship, especially in the particular contracting contexts, are also of highly pertinent to the strategies of financial service providers (Beckett et al., 2000).  Corporate reputation dimensions associated with important variables encompassing of customer satisfaction, loyalty, trust, and word of mouth (Walsh et al., 2009) are also factors of considerations beside price, service quality, and relationships ( Bowman et al., 2000), convenience.

The study of how investors behave when it comes to decision of which securities companies to go with shall give insights into the buying behaviour of financial services in Vietnam and would add to the limited research in the area.

With rapid change and more sophisticated customers, it has become very important that financial institutions determine the factors which are pertinent to the customers’ selection process (Boyd et al., 1994) when considering entering Vietnam securities market.