Banks raised wages, added staff in 2015

Average employee earnings in financial and banking services rose by 21 percent in 2015 and more than 17,000 people were hired during the year.

The average monthly income of bank workers ranged from VND13 million ($600) to VND23 million ($1,000).

Vietcombank, the country’s leading listed lender by market value, leads the pack with the commercial bank paying its employees a monthly average of VND22.7 million, equivalent to a pay increase of about $200 from the previous year.

Vietcombank has good reason to offer higher wages to its staff as statistics show the bank’s 15,000 employees are among the most efficient in the banking sector. More specifically, each staff member has on average contributed VND36 million to the bank’s monthly net income.

The banking sector was among the top industry sectors for wages in 2015, Hanoi-based recruitment firm Navigos Search said in their latest report, revealing that middle-level managers and senior executives working in finance and banking were paid monthly wages of between VND100 million to VND200 million.

Vietnam has been restructuring its banking system since 2011 and reducing the number of commercial banks burdened with bad debts through acquisitions and mergers.

Although generally these mergers did not result in large numbers of layyoffs, many banks did cut the pay of hundreds of full-time employees.

The merger between unlisted Phuong Nam Bank and Sacombank, Vietnam's fifth-largest partly private lender by assets, brought the average monthly employee earnings down to VND13 million from VND16 million the year before.

According to the Navigos Search report, manufacturers accelerated recruitment in the final three months of the year, accounting for 22 percent of the total number of newly-recruited employees, followed by 14 percent from the retail/consumer sector, and 10 percent respectively in the textile and finance sector.