Moody's takes rating actions on 15 Vietnamese banks

Moody's Investors Service has affirmed the long-term local and foreign currency deposit ratings, and where applicable, the issuer and senior unsecured ratings of 15 banks in Vietnam at Ba3 positive.

At the same time, Moody's revised the outlook for the long-term local and foreign currency deposit and issuer ratings of five banks to positive from negative, four banks to positive from stable, and six banks to stable from negative.

The rating actions follow Moody's affirmation of Vietnam's Ba3 issuer rating and the change in the outlook to positive from negative on March 18, 2021.

The affected 15 banks are: (1) An Binh Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ABB), (2) Asia Commercial Bank (ACB), (3) Ho Chi Minh City Development JSC Bank (HDBank), (4) JSC Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank), (5) JSC Bank for Investment & Development of Vietnam (BIDV), (6) Lien Viet Post Joint Stock Commercial Bank (Lien Viet), (7) Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB), (8) Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank (OCB), (9) Southeast Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SeABank), (10) Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank (TPBank), (11) Vietnam Bank for Agriculture & Rural Development (Agribank), (12) Vietnam International Bank (VIB), (13) Vietnam JSC Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank), (14) Vietnam Prosperity Jt. Stk. Commercial Bank (VPBank) and (15) Vietnam Technological and Commercial JSB (Techcombank).

With the exception of ABB, the Baseline Credit Assessments (BCAs), adjusted BCAs, Counterparty Risk Assessments (CRA) and counterparty risk ratings (CRR) assigned to the banks stated above are unaffected by today's rating actions. Moody's has downgraded ABB's BCA and adjusted BCA to b2 from b1, while the long-term CRA and CRR have been downgraded to B1(cr) and B1 from Ba3(cr) and Ba3, respectively.