Consumer credit shifts path to quality growth

Vietnam’s consumer finance market is redefining its growth model, with competition increasingly centred on risk management, digital capabilities, and customer experience.

- By Khanh Linh

According to FiinGroup’s Vietnam Consumer Finance Report for 2025, released in late May, Vietnam’s consumer finance sector is showing signs of recovery after a period marked by rising bad debts, tighter regulations, and slowing growth.

However, the market is no longer expanding through aggressive cash lending, it notes. Instead, lenders are increasingly prioritising credit quality, risk management, and more sustainable growth drivers as competition intensifies.

The firm said the shift reflects broader changes across the industry, where asset quality is increasingly replacing loan growth as the primary measure of performance.

While total retail credit continued to grow steadily in the first half of 2025 despite lingering macroeconomic uncertainties, market dynamics are becoming increasingly differentiated. Commercial banks strengthened their dominance, accounting for 95.2 per cent of total consumer credit outstanding and recording growth of 22.7 per cent.

Consumer finance companies expanded by 13.6 per cent, well below the pace of banks and significantly lower than the growth rates achieved before the pandemic.