A view of the conference. — Photo baochinhphu.vn

HÀ NỘI — Big data is a vital issue for banks in the digital transformation process, with the issue of data sharing and security top concerns, experts have said.

They were speaking at a conference on intelligent data management in banking and finance, held by the Banking Strategy Institute and Banking Academy this week.

Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Việt Nam (SBV) Nguyễn Kim Anh said the banking sector had been proactive in accessing research, building policies and facilitating the application of data in management and developing products and services over the past time, which created a driving force for digital transformation in the banking sector.

An SBV survey last month showed that half of local banks have built a centralised data warehouse.

About 50 per cent of banks have applied data analysis to optimise operating processes, increasing operational efficiency and managing risks.

Although commercial banks in Việt Nam have recognised data management as a basis for innovative activities, some surveys showed that nearly half of the banks had no action plan on data management.

Data cleaning had gone unnoticed from the data makers, said chief economist of the Bank for Investment and Development of Việt Nam (BIDV) Cấn Văn Lực.

Banking data was still largely dispersed, the amount of junk information was quite large and data quality was still low, he said.

The same situation also happened for other financial companies and the construction of new data warehouses was at the beginning stage without the connection of different data sources, he added.

Lacking legal corridor, banks fear risks

Banks in Việt Nam are quite open in sharing data with fintech and many other service providers such as electricity, water and telecommunications through application programming interface (API) portals.

However, leaders of many joint-stock commercial banks said sharing data with banks was still quite risky because there is no legal corridor related to this issue.

Lê Anh Dũng, deputy director of SBV’s Payment Department, said he expected the Ministry of Information and Communications would soon submit to the Government a decree on electronic identification, and the Ministry of Public Security would soon complete the development of a decree to protect personal data so that banks had a facility to exploit and protect data.

Dũng also suggested the Government study, consider and enforce the law on user data protection and the law on user data privacy protection to create a clear and synchronous legal framework for data management for the whole economy.

Agreeing, Lực proposed developing appropriate management policies and mechanisms to promote data management and analysis.

The Government and businesses must see data as a precious resource, which needs a safe and effective management and exploitation process, and speed up the building of national databases, he noted. — VNS