Vietnam Consumer Finance Growth Raises Funding Costs

That growth is making the cost of money the key battleground. Home Credit sold new bonds in May and June at 9.5% to 9.8% a year, well above its roughly 7.1% average funding cost in 2025, underscoring how quickly wholesale borrowing can eat into returns. EVF has taken a different route, seeking to lift charter capital through a private placement to as much as 8.455 trillion dong and expand the foreign ownership ceiling to 50%, giving it more room to fund lending in 2026-2027.

The divergence highlights a broader shift in Vietnam’s consumer credit market: growth is back, but access to cheap funding is not. FiinGroup said the higher cost of capital remains a structural handicap versus commercial banks, especially for standalone finance companies that lack a parent bank’s deposit base. Firms inside banking ecosystems, by contrast, can lean on group funding, bond issuance or international borrowing to protect spreads.

That is where MB Shinsei Finance, or Mcredit, appears better positioned. MB’s non-interest-bearing deposit ratio stood at 34.6% at the end of June, and the bank is planning 10 trillion to 15 trillion dong of subordinated bond issuance in the second half to support funding costs. VIS Rating said competition is increasingly shifting toward the strength of the ecosystem behind each lender, rather than loan growth alone.

For lenders without a banking parent, overseas funding is becoming more important. EVF said it raised about $190.7 million in 2025 from Swedfund, OeEB, EMF Microfinance Fund, Triple Jump and other international partners, and recently signed a $20 million loan with French development finance institution Proparco, half of which is earmarked for climate-related projects and half for women-led small businesses.

Policy changes are also widening the field. Vietnam’s Decree 69/2025 raises the maximum foreign ownership in non-bank credit institutions to 50% of charter capital, while a new central bank circular effective from February 2026 gives consumer finance companies more flexibility by lowering the minimum consumer credit ratio to 65% of total lending.

For investors, the message is that the rebound in consumer finance will not lift all lenders equally. Those with cheap parent funding, wider ecosystems or ready access to foreign capital are likely to preserve margins and grow faster, while pure-play finance companies face more pressure to pay up for liabilities just as credit demand improves.