Borrowing from this bank to pay off debt from another bank is 'stuck' because the bank wants to keep the customer.

Circular 06/2023/TT-NHNN (Circular 06) of the State Bank takes effect from September 1, banks are allowed to consider and decide to lend money to individual customers to repay loans at other credit institutions in advance.

A series of commercial banks have announced the implementation of loans under this program with interest rates ranging from only 5.6 - 7.5%/year.

According to Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam Dao Minh Tu, allowing banks to lend to customers to repay debts early at other banks is essentially one of the solutions to force commercial banks to reduce lending interest rates, thereby making lending interest rates more competitive.

However, not only coal businesses have difficulty accessing this loan, even banks are "powerless".

Sharing with VietNamNet , Mr. Nguyen Hong Phuc, Directorof SHB Can Tho Branch, said that SHB is implementing but currently Can Tho branch does not have outstanding loans under this program.

The biggest obstacle currently, according to Mr. Phuc, is that when lending to repay debt to another bank, there needs to be consensus from all three parties, including: the customer, the lending bank (the new bank) and the other bank (where the customer borrowed capital).

“There are customers who have come to our branch to discuss the issue. However, the biggest difficulty is that other banks want to keep their customers, so these cases are still in the negotiation stage,” said Mr. Phuc.

It is not easy to borrow from this bank to pay off debt from another bank.

Meanwhile, a credit specialist at a Vietcombank branch said that in fact, the loan product to repay other banks' debts has been implemented for a long time, but the borrowers were only corporate customers. This time, Circular 06 allows it to be applied to individual customers as well.

"However, the branch has not yet incurred outstanding loans to repay debts early at other banks according to Circular 06," she informed.

According to this credit specialist, from the reality with previously deployed corporate customers, businesses wanting to borrow money to pay off debt at another bank will have to request documents from another bank.

“The maximum loan limit and loan term are only equal to the original lending bank. In this case, we will have to re-evaluate the corresponding documents. In general, the procedure is the same as when lending to businesses,” added a credit specialist from Vietcombank.

In addition, any additional fees (if any) will also be borne by the customer with the old bank, depending on the contract signed between the two parties.

A credit specialist from VietinBank's personal customer division said that many customers know about this program and have directly asked the bank.

In this case, the bank staff can only advise the customer on the necessary procedures. However, in reality, problems arise so the customer only stops at the level of… finding out.

“If customers ask, we will guide them to supplement their records according to regulations. For example, the records are being kept at another bank, the customer's current financial situation, the customer's current outstanding debt, etc. In addition, customers must also pass the internal inspection and control process according to the regulations of each bank,” he said.

This credit specialist also revealed that the VietinBank branch where he works has not yet generated any outstanding loans to repay other banks according to Circular 06.

“We only follow the regulations and do not incur any additional procedures or costs other than those instructed by the headquarters. The bank does not lack money to lend. This year, credit is more flexible and we have not seen any directives to tighten lending like last year,” he shared.

The customers borrowing capital from this branch are also very diverse, from farming, trading rice, seafood, to small traders at the market. However, the majority of customers are still businesses and households in the seafood and rice sectors.

It is known that the majority of customers who are looking into this loan package are those who are borrowing capital from small joint stock commercial banks, while large banks such as VietinBank, Vietcombank, BIDV, and Agribank have quite similar interest rates with lower levels.

Source