Currency Cornucopia

This post came from my 2 week stint at the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV). After observing and interviewing the workers, as well as reading the bank’s credit provision manual (60 pages btw), I realised that to take out a single loan, there are a lot of different stages to go through. Even translating a third of it took me over a week, so whatever I say here will be the horribly abridged version. If anyone is interested, I’ll leave the document I translated at the bottom for your interest.

Have you taken a loan before? I haven’t, but the concept sounds simple enough. Go to a bank, ask for money, the bank checks for your credibility, and if you fit, they give you the contract. Sounds simple enough. Turns out, it’s not even close to being that nice.

When BIDV takes your loan, they first send it to a department that recommends your request for credit. Basically, they first send in a document asking the bank to give you money. Then, the bank does a risk assessment exercise, to assess whether you can pay back that debt. Then, after assessing the risk, the bank requests approval or rejection from the tippy top of the respective hierarchy, and finally, after all is said and done, you can finally receive (or not receive) your loan.

On the surface, it doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, things get much worse when you go into detail. First, every activity must be done in the correct department. There is obviously no single department doing everything, but in a big bank, there is a department for literally every single step, and every step must past through their respective department. Customer interaction? There’s a department for that. Customer relations? There’s a department for that. Credit recommendation? There’s a department for that. Hell, there’s a department that supports all other departments in credit provision. And, every time operations change department, documents must be clearly made to showcase and prove that a transfer happen.

Moreover, there are different clearance levels required at every stage, as well as whether it is at the branch or at the HQ. I’m not listing everything out, here, but like, there are several pages worth of this clearance stuff in the manual. I’ll put a picture below (a simplfied one at that), but there is a VERY rigid hierarchy in banks (unsurprisingly).

Look fun? Well, I don’t get it either. There is much, MUCH more outside of just where I sat (an office at one of BIDV’s branches – admittedly one of its biggest, but still).

I’m going to stop this post here. Basically, it’s the opening to what is to come. There’s over a week’s worth of content so I’m going to milk it for all that its worth. Banks are a lot more scary than I first thought lol.

Link to document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kjEtMvFicgA0hsYjBp-8IngWqel5VtTs0-M3q_fTdCY/edit?usp=sharing