On May 21, 2025, in Hanoi, the Banking Times in collaboration with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) organized a seminar on "Practice Sustainable Development Reporting in the banking sector with AI solutions". The event attracted more than 300 delegates from management agencies, financial institutions, fintech enterprises and international organizations.
Speaking at the event, Deputy Governor of the State Bank Pham Thanh Ha said that in 2024, there will be 33 organizations preparing a separate Sustainable Development Report - a record high to date. In addition, most credit institutions have integrated ESG content into their annual reports, with about 13-15 banks having published independent reports. In the first months of 2025 alone, 6 more commercial banks continued to publish sustainable development reports.
However, the Deputy Governor also frankly acknowledged that the practice and promotion of the Sustainable Development Report in Vietnam, especially in the banking industry, is still in the early stages, with many challenges in the process of implementing sustainable development and ESG governance such as legal framework, resources, data analysis capacity and especially the way of collecting and processing information effectively and transparently.
Therefore, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and modern digital technologies is considered a key solution, helping to improve data governance efficiency, enhance analytical, monitoring and decision-making capacity in a timely and transparent manner.
Sharing the same view, Editor-in-Chief of Banking Times Le Thi Thuy Sen affirmed that integrating ESG criteria into business strategies not only helps improve the competitiveness of credit institutions but also plays an important role in promoting green growth and sustainable development for the economy.
With useful shares from the speakers, Ms. Sen hopes that the seminar will bring a new, practical approach in applying AI and big data to the process of building sustainable development reports - from collection, processing to analysis and recommendations. This will be the foundation for the Vietnamese banking industry to approach international standards, contributing to building a transparent, modern economy that adapts to the digital age.
In a speech titled Global standards and the role of AI in the report on sustainable development of the banking industry, Mr. Mike suffield - Director of Policy and Development, Global ACCA emphasized the transformative potential of AI, while warning of risks such as data deviation, limitations in algorithm transparency and the phenomenon of greenwashing (green cleaning).
However, Mr. Mike suffield also recommends that AI can support the publishing of sustainable development information more effectively, meaningfully and closely, but it must be used ethically, transparently and in line with international frameworks...
From the perspective of technology solutions, Dr. Le Hung Cuong - Deputy General Director of FPT Digital, FPT Corporation said that the major challenges for businesses today are scattered ESG data, lack of standardization, manual reporting processes, time-consuming and prone to errors.
To solve this problem, FPT has developed integrated AI solutions such as VertZero, comprehensively digitizing the process of ESG data collection, calculation, management, creating emission reports and monitoring the implementation of commitments, thereby contributing to completing the company's ESG reporting.
