Women-owned SME enterprises are identified by many banks as one of the priority subjects for granting credit as well as other financial support solutions, including VPBank.
Since 2017, VPBankSME has pioneered in supporting female-owned enterprises through many practical and meaningful activities such as implementing loan incentives, developing WE credit cards exclusively for female-owned enterprises with many attractive incentives and privileges, organizing a chain of business connections, training and online/offline courses to improve management capacity, along with meaningful seminars to help female entrepreneurs balance their careers and families.
Resolutely with the vision and desire to accompany female entrepreneurs, VPBankSME continues to realize the goal of helping female entrepreneurs make breakthroughs, improve operational efficiency, and create a solid foundation for future development by launching a series of comprehensive incentive products to support this group of businesses.
Expanding financial incentives for sustainable development of female-owned enterprises
To solve the problem of capital access - one of the major difficulties that businesses face, VPBankSME has developed a policy of increasing the lending limit for unsecured loans by up to 20% compared to regulations. For mortgages, increasing the lending ratio on asset value by 5% has supported businesses in accessing larger loans, optimizing the ability to use assets to raise capital.
In addition, customers can take advantage of short-term capital from WE credit cards with a limit increase of 20% compared to other segments. WE credit cards have also been upgraded with a more attractive refund policy: unlimited 1% refund for insurance, beauty, shopping, and food expenses; unlimited 0.5% refund for education expenses. Accompanyed by VIP privileges such as airport lounges, Fast track or golf course incentives - contributing to enhancing the life experience for female leaders.
In the field of digitalization, VPBankSME offers a special incentive for the EcomPay payment portal when it is free of 700,000 VND/month, reduces transaction fees by 0.2%, reduces deposits by up to 60%, and supports businesses to save operating costs when doing business online. In addition, customers who open new accounts are also given beautiful account numbers (such as 9999, 6868, 8888...) worth 5 million VND, exempted from all money transfer fees on NEOBiz, reduced up to 50% of guarantee and L/C fees, and foreign exchange rate incentives for each period.
Increasing coordination with partners to build advanced support projects
In 2025, VPBankSME will continue to accompany CARE Vietnam in the Bung Sang initiative ( supported by Mastercard Comprehensive Growth Center) to implement the project "Female-owned business support launch pad". The project focuses on improving knowledge for female entrepreneurs, highlighted by the online course "Breakthrough business with AI" to help them quickly access and apply AI technology to effectively manage and operate businesses. In addition to online training, the project also organizes offline classes, creating opportunities for connection, sharing and learning between female entrepreneurs and experts in the fields of economics, technology and finance.
Not only training, the project also has practical support such as: online sales sponsorship with KOL, production of business introduction videos, giving gifts to female customers who are the first to access capital from VPBank... These activities contribute to strengthening the connection and understanding between the bank and customers.
Through 4 core launching floors: Finance, Technology, Trade and Knowledge, VPBankSME and CARE Vietnam continue to affirm their comprehensive support role for female entrepreneurs, helping them confidently break through and conquer their limits.
Currently, VPBank has a female-owned corporate customer base of about 21.6% of total SME corporate customers. The trust of many customers is a great motivation for us to continue researching and implementing more breakthrough and useful products and services for this customer segment in the coming time.
This is also a strong commitment of VPBank to accompany businesses to improve business efficiency and sustainable development VPBankSME representative shared more.
According to updated reports up to April 2024, about 51% of enterprises in Vietnam have at least one woman in the ownership structure, this rate is superior to many other countries.
Meanwhile, according to the Report "Promoting business growth through removing barriers" "Whitebook on Women-owned Small and Medium Enterprises in Vietnam jointly implemented by ADB and the Ministry of Planning and Investment, women currently own about 20% of SME businesses in operation (equivalent to more than 105,000 businesses).
These figures not only demonstrate the growing role of women in the business world, but also show great potential that needs to be exploited and supported to contribute more strongly to the economy.
