The race to "reinforce" the capital base
In 2026, the financial market witnessed an unprecedented strong wave of capital increases from banks. Faced with macroeconomic fluctuations and inflationary pressures, capital increases have become an essential requirement to ensure the Basel III safety ratio (CAR) and improve risk resilience.
The focus of this year's scale race is Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB) when this unit officially submitted to shareholders a plan to increase charter capital by a maximum of more than 22,137 billion VND. With flexible issuance plans from paying dividends in shares, offering rights to buy to existing shareholders to private placement, MB's charter capital is expected to reach a record milestone of 102.687 billion VND. Notably, MB sets a target of strong asset growth of 28% to reach the 2 million billion VND mark in 2026. If successful, this will be a historical milestone when a Vietnamese bank only takes more than 2 years to go from a scale of 1 million billion VND to 2 million billion VND of total assets.
Also participating in the "hundred-trillion VND capital club" is VPBank. After 2025, acting as a solid stepping stone with the companionship of strategic shareholder SMBC, VPBank continues to affirm its leading position in the private banking sector. This unit aims to bring the scale of capital mobilization for the first time to exceed the milestone of 1.03 million billion VND, an increase of 40% compared to the previous year to create an abundant liquidity foundation.
In the group of state-owned commercial banks, Vietcombank continues to maintain its leading position with a plan to increase its charter capital to 94.238 billion VND. This additional capital is clearly identified to be used to modernize technology infrastructure and promote substantive digital transformation. Meanwhile, VietinBank is also urgently using the entire outstanding separate profit after tax of 2025, which is more than 16,213 billion VND, to pay dividends in shares to increase capital according to the approval of the management agency.
The heat of the capital race is also spreading strongly to the mid-cap joint-stock bank group. Techcombank finalized the charter capital plan to reach 71,032 billion VND accompanied by two profit scenarios to proactively respond to conflict risks in the Middle East. MSB plans to increase capital to 37,440 billion VND, SeABank aims for the 34,688 billion VND mark, and NCB surprised when it approved a plan to offer 1 billion shares to raise capital to nearly 29,280 billion VND 3 years earlier than the roadmap. Even units such as: ABBank, Vietbank or VietABank also simultaneously carried out issuances to bring charter capital to a new high.
Ambition to encroach on specialized finance
Abundant financial resources become a backbone for banks to reposition their business models, shifting to sectors with higher technology content and added value than traditional credit.
Vietcombank, HDBank and VietinBank simultaneously aim to establish new legal entities or deploy business models at the VIFC International Financial Center, in order to exploit cross-border capital flows and participate in competition in the international financial market.
Techcombank and VPBank promote their participation in the digital asset market, gold trading and closed asset management to diversify non-interest revenue sources in the context of narrowing net interest margin (NIM) due to interest rate competition.
MSB promotes the plan to acquire a fund management company, officially participating in the field of premium asset management (Wealth Management), aiming to serve the rapidly growing middle-class customer group in Vietnam.
VietABank expressed its ambition to own more subsidiaries in the securities and insurance sectors by contributing capital or acquiring businesses that are operating effectively to complete the financial service chain from issuance guarantees to brokerage and portfolio management.
NCB focuses resources on developing the Super App digital banking ecosystem and pioneering the integration of the iziPay payment solution into the Visit Vietnam national tourism data platform, in order to remove payment barriers for international visitors and accompany the digital transformation strategy of the tourism industry.
In addition, the wave of transferring the listing exchange from UPCoM to HOSE of ABBank and Vietbank is also expected to raise the prestige, improve the liquidity of stocks and increase access to international investment funds that always require the highest level of transparent information disclosure standards.
To support these bold steps, units such as: SeABank or Vietcombank have consolidated the personnel apparatus from the Supervisory Board to the Board of Directors to strengthen the defense line in the risk management model to ensure that all new business activities are under safe control.
The entire banking system is strongly transforming towards the goal of modernizing and ensuring system safety through the application of the most advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing and big data to create differentiation in customer experience, optimizing operational efficiency on a multi-million-VND scale platform that has just been built.
This proactiveness helps banks seize opportunities from the new growth phase, while contributing to modernizing the national financial system and enhancing the position of Vietnamese banks in the regional and international markets by 2030.
