Empowered FE Credit, one of Vietnam's oldest and largest consumer credit companies as well as other FinTech partners to implement a robo-lending platform app, $NAP, which digitalizes the entire process of customer on-boarding, loan application, know-your-customer (KYC), credit underwriting, loan approval and disbursement. With this platform application, FE Credit has been able to shorten the borrowing process from 4-5 days to less than 15 minutes, drastically increasing its appeal to customers and overcoming the challenges inherent in the traditional lending model.

1. How one of the first
non-bank financial
credit companies in
Vietnam changed
consumer lending

2. 2 | How one of the first non-bank financial credit companies in Vietnam changed consumer lending
How to improve
customer experience
so that they would
do more business
with us?
With digitization, FE Credit transformed
the consumer loan borrowing process for
Vietnamese customers.
The consumer lending industry in Vietnam has been seeing
remarkable growth. According to a report by the National
Financial Supervision Commission, which advises the prime
minister on matters related to the financial markets, consumer
lending in Vietnam has been growing fast since 2015, with
growth rate at 65% in 2017 compared to 50.2% in 2016, and
with the percentage of consumer lending in total credit rising
to 18% in 2017 from 12.3% in 2016.2
In this context, various players, both domestic and foreign,
are eyeing a slice of the market. Banks and corporates
have opened their consumer credit units, and many foreign
consumer credit companies have come to Vietnam, either
setting up greenfield ventures or acquiring existing players.
With so many players in the market, the consumer experience
still leaves much to be desired. Even though most Vietnamese
customers are tech savvy (84% of the population were
smartphone users at the end of 2017), the process of securing
consumer credit is mostly manual and consequently, slow from
a customer’s perspective.3
Source:
1. https://fecredit.com.vn/en/about-us/
2. http://nfsc.gov.vn/sites/default/files/bao_cao_tong_quan_thi_truong_tai_chinh_2017.pdf
3. https://vietnamnews.vn/economy/418482/smartphone-users-cover-84-of-vn-population.html#xZBTiPff3afBjQ6K.97
FE Credit, one of Vietnam’s
oldest and the largest consumer
credit company, worked with EY
and several FinTech partners
to implement a robo-lending
platform app, suitably named
as $NAP, which digitizes the
whole process of customer
on-boarding, loan application,
know-your-customer (KYC),
credit underwriting, loan
approval and disbursement.1
As a result, FE Credit reduced
the borrowing process
from 4–5 days to less than
15 minutes, thus drastically
increasing its appeal to
customers, while overcoming
the challenges inherent in the
traditional lending model.

3. 3How one of the first non-bank financial credit companies in Vietnam changed consumer lending |
The typical process is as follows: A customer files an
application either online or offline and submit paper
documents to the credit company. The company then
assesses the documents, and then calls or texts the
customer if the loan is approved. The customer then
signs a paper contract with the company, and only then
the company remits the money to the customer’s bank
account. The process usually takes at least 4–5 days.4
FE Credit, originally founded as the Consumer Finance
Division of Vietnam Prosperity under Vietnam Prosperity
Joint — Stock Commercial Bank, was established in 2010
and is one of the early players in the market.
As of 2018, FE Credit has served millions of Vietnamese
across 63 provinces and cities nationwide with a wide
range of products consisting of personal loan, consumer
durable loan, two-wheeler loan, credit card and insurance.
The company boasts a database of 25 million customers
(or 27% of the population of Vietnam), of which 12 million
were applicants. The company has given out 8 million
loans, and issued 1 million credit cards over the past
8 years, capturing a market share of over 50%, and
bringing more people into the fold of organized finance
than the whole banking sector put together.
Kalidas Ghose, FE Credit’s CEO, thinks there is still
much room for growth for the company’s revenues and
customer base.
FE Credit previously had a basic app, but besides filing the
loan application on the app, customers still had to submit
physical documents and sign the contract offline before
receiving the loan disbursement in their bank account.
This app was hence not a significant improvement
from the customer’s perspective in terms of time
and convenience.
Meanwhile, in China and India, many consumer lending
companies have launched a complete digital process of
loan application, approval and disbursement, taking only
10–15 minutes for customers to receive the money.
FE Credit recognized that if it can provide a similar
process in Vietnam, the benefits would be two-fold —
customers will gladly adopt the FE Credit app, and the
cost of operation for FE Credit will be reduced.
As the Vietnamese consumer lending market heats up
with many players, the risk would be high for FE Credit to
lose market share to competition if it doesn’t move fast.
Source:
4. https://fecredit.com.vn/en/cash-loan/cash-incentives/

4. 4 | How one of the first non-bank financial credit companies in Vietnam changed consumer lending
Greater challenge creates room for
more remarkable improvement
FE Credit, its FinTech partners and EY made robo-lending work in a
paper-based system.
FE Credit worked with EY and several FinTech companies to
create an end-to-end digital lending platform app.
The lending platform for the $NAP app was created by
integrating through APIs a host of digital technology and
FinTech solutions on a flexible workflow solution guided by
a versatile rule engine. It combines new technology with
traditional lending science without any compromise on KYC,
verification, underwriting, compliance or customer service.5
The platform digitizes the entire customer journey (or lifecycle)
from application through mobile device to receiving disbursal
through bank account or retail outlets (in cash) and allowing
them to service the loans up to termination through the same
device. This eliminates human intervention at all stages of the
lifecycle, as opposed to only onboarding.
The technologies incorporated on the platform, beyond the
ability to support Vietnamese language and script, include
features such as facial recognition, AI-based optical character
recognition (OCR), voice based virtual assistant, speech to text,
device based scoring, telco data scoring, eSignature, and more.
Though the EY team had experience launching a similar digital
lending app in India, the challenge in Vietnam was unique as
most documents required in the lending process, namely ID,
utility bills and pay slips, are still stored in paper form.
To overcome this challenge, the new FE Credit $NAP app
uses OCR and intelligent character recognition (ICR) to verify
the customer’s identity, by optically reading documents that
customers submit through the app in the form of images.
A total of 15 integrations had to be done with internal and
external systems including various bureaus, payment gateways
and banks to achieve end-to-end digitization.
As this is the first app of its kind in Vietnam, all templates had
to be created from scratch. Moreover, as customers in Vietnam
have never used such an app before, the app has to be very
simple, self-explanatory and intuitive.
Over the course of four months, the EY team from India
advised FE Credit on the industry best practices in application
design, vendor selection, and prototyping.
$NAP was launched in August 2018, enabling customers to fill
out a loan application, receive approval and disbursement within
24 hours. As of October, the app had over 10,000 downloads.6
Source:
5. https://fecredit.com.vn/ung-dung-cho-vay-sieu-tien-loi-nap-chinh-thuc-ra-mat-thi-truong/
6. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fecredit.RoboLending&hl=en_SG

5. 5How one of the first non-bank financial credit companies in Vietnam changed consumer lending |
Making use of mobile for large-scale
customer acquisition
FE Credit is leading the pack in acquiring customers at a speed
never imagined before.
By eliminating traditional paper-based application and face-to-
face KYC procedures, this platform decreased the risk of losing
a lead due to inconvenient and time-consuming procedures,
and thus reduced the cost of acquiring and on-boarding
customers for FE Credit.
In Vietnam, mobile phones have enabled digital connectivity to
the unbanked population and mobile transaction platforms are
key to acquiring customers in the unbanked market due to its
convenience and accessibility.
FE Credit now has a first-mover advantage in the Vietnamese
consumer lending market. Moreover, by using AI algorithms
and KYC insights to further analyze the market segment, FE
Credit has successfully penetrated the unbanked market as
they managed to understand their customers’ needs and wants.
The company is now working with some of the leading new-
age lenders to bolt on to the platform as white label partners,
giving them access to Vietnam while offering more options for
inclusion which would not be possible without the platform.
The ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) initiative of
the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has recognised the
platform to be a ready-to-use, highly suitable demand-side use
case replicable across markets by partner financial institutions
(FIs) to complement their supply-side platform. In addition,
the FE Credit platform is capable of integrating with the AFIN
platform when the latter is ready.
FE Credit is working on the possibility of extending its lending
services to the rural areas, in collaboration with IFC, to add to
its urban and suburban presence.
With all these moves, FE Credit, in partnership with IFC, aims
to create a mobile-centric, digitally driven financial ecosystem
driving financial inclusion and support economic progress by
driving the wheels of domestic business, both on the supply
and demand sides.

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Duong Nguyen
EY Deputy Market Segment Leader
+84 24 3211 6677
duong.nguyen@vn.ey.com
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