Team size: 22

What are the most significant cases and transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

The most significant transaction that my legal and compliance team has recently been involved in is the entrustment lending program, where Home Credit Vietnam cooperated with Standard Chartered Bank in providing financial products for individual customers in Vietnam.

Even though the concept of entrustment lending has been stipulated by laws for quite some time already, it is mostly used when a group company engages a licensed bank to act as its coordinator in receiving and then allocating its inter-company loans to subsidiaries or affiliates. After a long period of struggling with both legal and operational obstacles for the cooperation, this transaction marks the first time the concept of entrustment lending was implemented between two credit institutions in Vietnam (or between a consumer finance company and a bank, to be exact).

We were also recently involved in the introduction of the BNPL (buy now pay later) solution for Home Credit Vietnam to cooperate with various partners in Vietnam market. The solution not only opens a new business opportunity for Home Credit Vietnam and our business partners, but also allows the customers to enjoy a fast and convenient payment tool for their online and offline transactions, other than just cards or e-wallets normally used in the market.

Home Credit Vietnam might not be the first to bring the BNPL product to the Vietnam market, but we are definitely the first stand-alone credit institution offering the BNPL solution to various types of partners, which in-turn results in Vietnamese customers having better shopping experience and convenience.

Could you share an example of a time when you came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

The creation and later application of the paperless solution for contracts signed with customers has so far been one of the most memorable contributions from the legal and compliance team to Home Credit Vietnam. The idea of having two-stage signing (to ensure customers agree with the digital signing approach before officially signing the digital lending contracts) is the starting point for the whole project of paperless contracts with customers at the later stage.

This solution, together with the deployment of the digital signatures (at the later stage), has helped the company save a lot of costs printing and maintaining the printing devices (even when accrued with the cost of deployment of the digital signatures).

Entrustment lending solution is also another example of bringing legal solutions to support the growing of business, and the whole project is mainly done in-house.

How do you see the general counsel role evolving in Vietnam over the next five-ten years?

For the sectors that have “mass” exposures to customers like the financial, food and beverage, and real estate sectors, it is quite clear that the overall regulatory framework in Vietnam becomes stricter every day to protect the legitimate rights and benefits of the customers.

In these sectors, the role of the general counsel might require focusing more on strategy to help the company prepare for any regulatory headwind that might have big impacts on its operations.

For other sectors, I would see the trend remain somewhat the same; the general counsel is supposed to know the market and understand the company from top to bottom. In this case, the general counsel will not only provide advice to the company, but also contribute opinions to regulators and business associations to build a better business environment for the company and the whole sectors.

What are some of the main trends impacting your industry in Vietnam?

I would see fintech, financial inclusion and big data application having a huge impact on the development of the banking sector in Vietnam. On the other hand, cooperation among credit institutions (and accordingly sharing risks and benefits) might be the way going forward in the current situation.