Finance industry pioneers in the digital revolution

Overview of the Online Forum "Finance Digital 2021".

Digital economic infrastructure is growing fast

The digital economy is being researched, applied and developed by many countries. Especially, under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, digital transformation is no longer an option but a requirement for each country and business.

Along with the digital government pillar, the two pillars of the digital economy and digital society have been officially deployed by the Government and have begun to achieve some impressive results. The National Digital Transformation Program to 2025, with a vision to 2030, has identified eight areas with social impact, related to people's daily life, changing perceptions fastest, bringing efficiency and helping to save costs. Priority should be given to digital transformation, including in the financial - banking sector.

With the role of the lifeblood of the economy, digital transformation in the financial - banking sector is one of the key factors for digital transformation in general and promoting digital transformation in other fields.

The finance sector is one of the ministries and sectors that have pioneered and deployed the digital transformation roadmap, in which, setting goals in 2021-2025 to build e-finance, digital finance based on digital data and open data. The Ministry of Finance strives to establish a fully digitalised financial system and smart finance by 2030.

Dr. Vu Tien Loc, Member of the Economic Committee of the National Assembly, said that we were facing the challenges and opportunities of the 4.0 revolution; its core problem is digital transformation.

“Every revolution always opens opportunities for some countries and only a few countries can breakthrough. I believe that we had not yet been overcome in the previous revolution due to history and many other reasons, but this revolution is an opportunity for Vietnam to develop breakthroughs and implement digital transformation because digital transformation is a matter of survival, there is no other choice,” Loc said.

Regarding Vietnam's digital transformation, Loc said Vietnam digital economic infrastructure has developed quite quickly and has reached the same level as the top countries in the world.

The information and communication technology industry has also developed very strongly and is also in the top group.

Regarding national data infrastructure, we are making efforts to build a database, and have implemented the construction of a national database on population, land, and database resources for service, production and business in the area, in important industries such as energy, infrastructure, medical treatment, education and training.

The financial industry actively shifts to operate on a digital technology platform

According to Loc, among State agencies, the finance agency, especially tax, customs, treasury, and insurance sectors is the leading agency in building a database to serve professional operations amid the financial industry shifting to operate on digital technology platforms.

Recognising the finance industry as a pioneer in institutional transformation, administrative reform, abolition of sub-licenses and is now leading in the digital revolution among the State management authorities of the Government of Vietnam, Loc said that the business community was highly appreciated this effort of the finance industry.

Sharing about this issue, Dr. Nguyen Viet Hung, Deputy Director of the Department of Financial Informatics and Statistics (Ministry of Finance), said in 2018, the Ministry of Finance built the e-Government Architecture of the Ministry of Finance, in 2020 it would change to the Master Architecture towards the Digital Ministry of Finance to complete the establishment of a digital financial ecosystem, in which the Government played the role of creating connections with units through the opening and sharing of digital platform data.

To achieve this, the digital financial ecosystem needs the ability to build, integrate and share public budget financial data for many legal entities, with quick access based on the network environment.

Financial and budgetary data is raw material for people and businesses to exploit to create digital services that are suitable for business models and the needs of businesses and individuals in the fastest way, thereby optimising business plans.

“Those who worked in the digital transformation of the finance sector had regularly studied, followed the practice, advised the leaders of the Ministry to issue documents to promote this process, promote the digital government, support for people and businesses. In 2018, we revised the Decree on Electronic Transactions so that electronic activities in the finance sector to serve as the foundation for the digital economy and digital government. This event was considered by VCCI as a highlight of administrative reform in 2018. That was the recognition of the business community,” Hung stated.