Savings interest rates increase sharply, two banks pay interest up to 9%

Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MSB) has just announced a deposit interest rate schedule for individual customers. For online deposits, interest rates range from 4.1–5.8%/year for terms from 1–36 months. Specifically, terms of 1–5 months are listed at 4.1%/year; terms of 6–11 months are 5.2%/year; from 12 months onwards reaching the highest level of 5.8%/year.

Notably, MSB applies an interest rate of up to 9%/year for a 13-month term for newly opened customers (or savings books opened from the beginning of 2018 automatically renewed) with deposits from 500 billion VND or more. Previously, this bank used to apply a rate of 8%/year for a 12-month term with a minimum deposit amount of 500 billion VND.

Not only MSB, some other banks also list high interest rates in customers with large balances.

PVcomBank is applying a 9%/year rate for terms of 12–13 months when depositing at the counter, with the condition of maintaining a minimum balance of 20,000 billion VND.

HDBank implements a rate of 8.1%/year for a 13-month term and 7.7%/year for a 12-month term, requiring a minimum balance of 500 billion VND. Vikki Bank applies an interest rate of 8.4%/year for terms from 13 months or more, with a minimum deposit amount of 999 billion VND.

BVBank is deploying an online deposit certificate product with the highest interest rate of up to 7.8%/year. Customers can purchase deposit certificates via digital channel with a minimum amount of 10 million VND, applicable to four terms including 6, 9, 12 and 15 months. The corresponding interest rate is 6.5%/year for terms of 6 and 9 months; 6.8%/year for a term of 12 months; and highest 7.8%/year for a 15-month term.

In addition to additional interest rate programs, some banks have officially listed savings interest rates exceeding the threshold of 7%/year such as OCB, Bac A Bank, PGBank, MBV and Cake by VPBank. This development shows that the deposit interest rate level continues to be maintained at a high level, especially for medium and long-term terms.

Thus, the interest rate of 8–9%/year currently appears in the market but is mainly for customers with very large sources of money and meeting the specific conditions of each bank, while the general interest rate level is still significantly lower.