Research and propose solutions to improve the competitiveness of Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank in the retail market

 Diversify service types based on the principle of customer convenience.

goods anywhere, anytime

 Strengthen and support the management and operation of the Board of Directors and the Board of Management.

 Ensure security and safety in business and the entire system.

Applying modern technology helps Maritime Bank improve management quality, ensure safety in operations, reduce management costs, reduce product prices and enhance competitiveness. Therefore, it can be said that the modern advanced technology platform is not only the key to creating conditions for Maritime Bank to affirm its position and role as the leading provider of banking services in Vietnam but also helps us to be more confident when participating in the process of regional and world economic integration.

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3.2.2. Diversify retail products and services.

Diversifying products and services is a pressing issue for Vietnamese commercial banks today. Diversifying operations does not mean spreading the bank's resources evenly across all operations, but rather determining the bank's strategic operations, which operations the bank has the most advantage in, which best meet market demand, and which operations can be developed first. Based on the current retail situation, Maritime Bank needs to quickly diversify traditional banking products and services, research and prepare to launch new products and services that suit the needs of each customer group.

* Diversify products

+ Deposit products : A bank with more diverse, flexible and convenient capital mobilization products will be able to attract new customers and maintain existing customers better than other banks. Banks today not only mobilize savings deposits but also encourage people to deposit money in many different forms such as: opening deposit accounts, mobilizing through promissory notes, bonds, rich in terms, denominations and types, etc. When capital mobilization products become diverse and attractive, it will make customers want to deposit more money.

Maximize existing capital mobilization products. Diversify capital mobilization forms to maximize the mobilization of idle money in the population by perfecting and improving the quality of existing deposit products, researching and soon implementing new capital mobilization products with rich and attractive promotional forms such as: Accumulated savings, housing security savings, education security savings, etc. At the same time, deploy capital mobilization and payment at home to create favorable conditions for customers, especially very useful for retired customers with idle money.

In addition to implementing attractive mobilization products, interest rate policy is also an important tool in developing capital mobilization products, especially mobilization from the population. Therefore, an interest rate policy that is both competitive and ensures the business efficiency of the bank is very necessary. The main purpose of customers when depositing money in the bank is to make a profit. Therefore, a low interest rate will not compensate for the devaluation of the deposit. Therefore, the mobilization interest rate must be greater than the inflation rate and the medium and long-term deposit interest rate must be greater than the short-term. To stimulate long-term deposits, Maritime Bank needs to create a clear gap between long-term and short-term mobilization interest rates. This does not mean that the medium and long-term mobilization interest rate must be increased because manufacturers do not easily accept it. Moreover, if the deposit interest rate is high, they will not invest directly in business plans but deposit money in the bank to earn interest. Thus, banks have difficulty in solving output. Therefore, it is necessary to study and balance short-term deposit interest rates and medium and long-term deposits to create the necessary gap between these two interest rates. In addition, in medium and long-term deposit interest rates, it is also necessary to set appropriate interest rates between different terms, ensuring the principle: the longer the term, the higher the interest rate, reflecting the supply and demand of capital, ensuring positive real interest rates but at the same time ensuring the business efficiency of the bank.

Interest bonus for customers who maintain account balances with actual terms longer than nominal terms : For customers who withdraw money before maturity, the bank applies an interest rate lower than the initial term interest rate. So in this case

In the opposite case, Maritime Bank can encourage depositors to deposit money in accounts with actual terms longer than nominal terms by rewarding a certain percentage equivalent to the difference between actual and nominal terms. This will stimulate depositors, especially those who have money but have not yet determined the time they need it. On the other hand, the bank also has a stable capital with lower costs.

+ Developing consumer lending products: the economy is growing, the consumer demand of the population is increasing, especially the urban population. Therefore, consumer lending products will play a key role in developing NHBL products. Most of Maritime Bank's current personal loan products focus on savings products, so it is necessary to develop other credit products such as: overdraft on individual customers' deposit accounts within the permitted limit for certain customer groups, study abroad loans, loans to support housing needs, loans for household production and business, unsecured loans, car loans, loans to advance money from selling listed securities, loans for personal business of households, discounting valuable papers... Currently, the demand for consumer credit is gradually increasing, competition between banks is therefore also becoming fiercer, therefore, Maritime Bank needs to have measures to improve competitiveness such as increasing the limit, reducing unnecessary cumbersome lending procedures. Closer cooperation with commodity suppliers to increase consumer loan balance. In addition, building a personal customer scoring system to reduce risks and make quick and accurate lending decisions is also a necessary requirement. In addition, it is also necessary to strengthen cooperation with organizations and businesses in paying for services and regular, stable income such as salary payment, payment for postal services, electricity, water, etc.

+ Develop products and services for customers according to specific segments : Based on customer segmentation, design product sets for different customer groups such as priority customer group (FCB), VIP customer group, mass customer group, and general customer group. Accordingly, each

The customer group will design products with specific features for each customer group such as non-term deposit products for payment purposes, accumulation products and term deposit products for investment purposes, increasing flexibility to attract large deposit sources and increasing customer choices.

+ Diversify card types: Cards are a spearhead in diversifying banking products and services. However, currently, Maritime Bank's card services are still limited, not diverse and do not meet the diverse needs of social classes. Therefore, in addition to strengthening traditional card products, Maritime Bank needs to research and develop many different types of card products to increase the competitiveness of cards, as well as serve the diverse needs of society. Currently, Maritime Bank only has the MasterCard card system, so the competitiveness is not high. Therefore, Maritime Bank needs to upgrade to using the Visa card system.

Diversify types of personal accounts, encourage customers to open personal accounts using cards. At the same time, allow customers to use debit cards to withdraw money or pay for goods from many different foreign currency accounts with the application of attractive exchange rates. Currently, many banks have linked with universities to issue free debit cards that are also student cards to students such as Dong A Bank, VIB International Bank, etc. This association is welcomed by most students. This is a very good initiative, Maritime Bank should quickly have a partnership strategy to capture this large market. For the association card product in the world, it has been shown that, today, customers do not only expect credit cards to be simply a means of payment and credit, but also the utilities and incentives that the association members can bring. Therefore, Maritime Bank needs to link with a number of domestic and international partners providing goods and services to issue association cards to customers. The areas that have the potential to link with high efficiency must be units with a large number of regular customers who consume a lot of goods and services such as: supermarkets, airlines, insurance, post and telecommunications, gasoline, etc.

Strongly implement loyalty point programs for loyal customers to give appropriate gifts based on their points.

* Launching some new products

Deploying remittance payment service at home : With more than 2.5 million overseas Vietnamese residing abroad, in 2011 alone, it reached nearly 4 billion or more - a not small number. Not to mention that we currently have a large number of people working abroad, ... Increasing this service aims to increase capital mobilization and increase service fees from payments. Currently, customers receiving remittances through Maritime Bank must go to the bank to receive money, while other banks such as Dong A Bank and VIB International Bank have deployed remittance payment service at home for a long time. To improve competitiveness in this field, Maritime Bank needs to take advantage of online technology and a wide network of branches to quickly implement remittance payment service at home.

Asset storage and safe deposit box rental: In Hanoi, only ANZ and HSBC banks provide this service to customers at a very high fee. In Ho Chi Minh City, Sacombank provides the service at a relatively affordable price. Meanwhile, this service is very developed in developed countries and countries in the region, bringing a stable source of income for banks. With a very small area and a small number of staff, Maritime Bank can take advantage of the built safe deposit box system to deploy the service in a short time. The target customers should be regular customers with high income at Maritime Bank to limit risks due to lack of experience as well as the complexity of the service.

Deploying deposit service via ADM (Automatic Deposit Machine) automatic transaction system: One of the features of the automatic transaction system is the deposit function, called ADM machine. In Vietnam, although the automatic transaction system has been deployed for many years, commercial banks have only focused on exploiting ATM services, and have not developed ADM services. In addition to ATM functions such as: account information lookup, payment for goods and services, service information, the ADM system

Other services, ... also have the function of automatic deposit, which means that customers will not have to go to the bank to deposit money with complicated and time-consuming procedures, but only need to go to ADM machines to deposit money and it is still very safe. Implementing that attractive service will create high competitiveness for Maritime Bank card service because currently only Dong A Bank and Hanoi Housing Bank have previously deployed this service.

3.2.3. Promote customer care marketing

The task of retail activities is to attract a large number of customers from all walks of life with different incomes, psychology and interests, so the application of Marketing principles in customer relationship management is of great significance. It is a business strategy to link and coordinate people with communication skills with optimal processes and modern technology to balance two benefits: the bank's profits and maximum customer satisfaction. With the reality of its retail activities, to do a good job of marketing, Maritime Bank needs to implement the following measures:

 It is necessary to strengthen the introduction work on mass media, widely advertise to the population about the usage and benefits of the services that modern banks are providing such as personal accounts, cards, money transfers, other modern banking products, etc. Each image representing each type of product must be clearly and consistently shown in all information channels to customers from envelopes, printed statement papers, request forms, etc. and especially the uniforms of bank employees. It is necessary to coordinate with television, radio and newspapers to organize programs to learn about the products and payment services of banks in the form of reports or questions and answers about socio-economics. These programs aim to help the majority of the public have a basic understanding of the payment services of banks and grasp the usage and benefits of banking products. In addition, improving the quality of leaflets and websites introducing products and services to impress viewers is very necessary in today's increasingly competitive business environment.

 Standardize the external image of Maritime Bank offices from architecture to logo and color. For retail activities, the brand associated with sales locations is an issue that needs special attention because it greatly affects the impression of customers. It is necessary to build a typical Maritime Bank motif so that customers can recognize the bank providing their familiar financial services anywhere.

 It is necessary to regularly conduct customer opinion surveys through questionnaires, direct contact, etc. to understand customer needs and opinions, thereby having effective service methods, correcting shortcomings, developing new products suitable to customer needs, and avoiding waste.

 Improve the customer service department's expertise, making customers feel respected every time they come to the bank. This department has the function of guiding customers for the first time to declare information, answer customers' questions, advise and introduce the bank's products to customers.

 Building Maritime Bank's transaction culture. That culture is expressed through

Unique style along with civilized and polite attitude of retail staff.

3.2.4. Synchronize market activities, distribution channels, services and costs

As a premise and closely related to the above solutions, the solution to synchronously implement market activities, distribution channels, services and costs will bring high efficiency to other solutions.

- Market: The number of individual customers is often very large and the service usage time is long. Pay attention to customers aged 23-35 because of their dynamism in accessing products and willingness to use banking services, although Vietnam only has about 20% of the population participating in the retail banking market.

- Distribution channel: Focus on electronic distribution channel through the application of technology (internet/phone/sms banking), although this requires high initial costs. Currently, the number of Vietnamese people using the Internet is increasing, in 2012 this number was over 35 million people, the use of e-commerce in Vietnam is growing. Many administrative management activities such as customs

Electronic payment, electronic tax, electronic bidding, etc. are being widely deployed. Many fast-growing information technology enterprises in Vietnam such as FPT, Fujitsu Vietnam, etc., create conditions for Maritime Bank to develop this distribution channel. The high costs in expanding the market can be partly solved by cooperating with telecommunications companies when using electronic distribution channels.

Along with this new distribution channel is the issue of security and safety, because this is the risk of the banking service and the problem of technical experts to guarantee the technology. In fact, there are banks that own core banking worth tens of millions of USD, but electronic banking services are mainly for information retrieval, not providing communication and transaction services, causing waste of technology.

- Services: Focus on developing services on the technology platform of internet/phone/sms banking) and linkage (banking - insurance, banking - securities...) in addition to developing other retail banking products,

- Cost: Applying technology and developing retail services in general requires large costs, applying electronic banking services requires network connection costs with foreign banks. For example: buying a chip card blank is 5 times higher than a magnetic card blank (the cost for a magnetic card is at least 330,000 VND/card). The average capital to equip each ATM is from 10,000 USD to 13,000 USD including warranty and technical maintenance costs. However, this is an activity that Maritime Bank needs to implement early according to its strategy to retain and expand its customer base.

3.3. Recommendations.

As analyzed above, there are many objective factors beyond the control of the bank that affect the development of NHBL services. Therefore, in addition to the efforts of Maritime Bank, there needs to be thorough support from the State Bank.

The State Bank of Vietnam plays an important role in strategic orientation for the development of banking services, proposing policies to support the development of new services of commercial banks. According to the Law on Credit Institutions, Vietnamese commercial banks can perform many banking services. In order for commercial banks to diversify their retail operations, the State Bank of Vietnam is requested to:

Research and propose solutions to improve the competitiveness of Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank in the retail market - 12

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