Check Your Own Deposit Against the Regulator's Records: People's Credit Fund Savers Get a Lookup Tool

Vietnam’s quỹ tín dụng nhân dân (people’s credit funds) are small cooperative lenders. Most serve a single commune or ward, and their depositors are often farmers and small traders who hold a passbook and little else. When one of these funds goes wrong, depositors usually find out late, and the only record of what they are owed is the fund’s own ledger.

Since 15 September 2025 the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) has run a central Hệ thống thông tin phục vụ công tác giám sát (supervisory information system) into which every people’s credit fund reports its loans, depositors, staff, members, collateral and financial statements. Thông tư 55/2026/TT-NHNN opens a small window into that system for depositors. From 26 November 2026, a person who keeps money at a people’s credit fund will be able to check the information on their own deposit that the fund has reported to the regulator. If the figures do not match their passbook, they can flag it to the SBV.

The document

Number: Thông tư 55/2026/TT-NHNN, amending Thông tư 18/2025/TT-NHNN of 31 July 2025.
Issued by: the Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam; signed by Deputy Governor Phạm Tiến Dũng. The drafting unit was the Cục An toàn hệ thống các tổ chức tín dụng (Credit Institutions System Safety Department).
Signed: 12 October 2026.
Effective: 26 November 2026 (Article 8).
Length: nine articles over five pages. Articles 1–7 amend Articles 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 16 of Circular 18; there is no transition clause.

The SBV published a consolidated text, Văn bản hợp nhất 116/2026/VBHN-TT-NHNN (23 October 2026), with footnotes marking every amended clause.

What changes

1. Depositors can look up their own deposit data (new Article 8(4)). A customer who keeps deposits at a people’s credit fund may look up “information related to the deposits of that customer” based on the reports stored in the supervisory system. They must keep their personal and lookup information confidential. If the result does not match, the customer reports it to the Ngân hàng Nhà nước chi nhánh Khu vực (the regional SBV branch covering the fund’s head office). The circular says that report becomes the basis for the branch to “verify and handle” the discrepancy under the law.

The mechanics are left to a separate Governor’s guideline, which must cover at least five points: how depositors look up their data, how they report a mismatch, what the regional branch has to do, the deadlines for receiving, verifying and answering, and the date the service starts. So 26 November is when the legal basis takes effect, not necessarily when the lookup goes live.

2. Credit funds must tell their customers. Under a new Article 14(5), regional branches must require each fund to notify depositors and to post a notice at its head office, its transaction offices and its website if it has one. Funds must also work with the commune People’s Committee to announce the service through local media. Article 14(6) lets the branch demand information from the fund to handle mismatch reports.

3. The IT department builds it. New Article 10(11)–(13) gives the SBV’s Cục Công nghệ thông tin (IT Department) three jobs. It designs and runs the lookup and drafts the Governor’s guideline. It builds the tooling to store and analyse lookup results. It applies technical measures to protect personal data whenever the system shares data containing personal information with Deposit Insurance of Vietnam or Co-opBank. The system-safety department must report a monthly summary of lookup results to the Governor (new Article 11(10)). Mismatches therefore become a supervisory signal as well as a customer-service matter.

4. A default sharing scope for Co-opBank. Under the old Article 8(2), Bảo hiểm tiền gửi Việt Nam (Deposit Insurance of Vietnam, DIV) and Ngân hàng Hợp tác xã Việt Nam (Co-opBank) had to apply in writing and get the Governor’s approval before receiving any data. Co-opBank’s use was limited to “capital regulation, internal audit, inspection and supervision of system safety”. The new text drops the up-front application step. Co-opBank automatically receives three things:

the reports that credit funds file;
inspection and examination conclusions from regional branches, plus outputs on how funds are fixing what inspectors found;
analytical outputs built from the funds’ reports.

Anything beyond that still needs a written request and the Governor’s approval. DIV’s scope is still defined by the separate rules on information exchange between the SBV and DIV.

5. A sharper personal-data clause. The old text said only that shared data “must ensure” compliance with personal data protection law. The new Article 8(2)(d) requires recipients to comply specifically with khoản 2 Điều 19 Luật Bảo vệ dữ liệu cá nhân (Personal Data Protection Law 91/2025/QH15), alongside related rules.

6. Changing the reporting templates. Previously, the SBV Inspectorate, the supervision department and regional branches that wanted a new report had to draft the template themselves and send it to the system-safety department. Now they “propose to the Governor”, through that department, any change to the reports and to the validation formulas, outputs and calculation methods, and they must explain why it is needed. DIV and Co-opBank get the same right (new Article 16(4)). Before the list of reports changes, the IT department must also assess the impact on the system and survey the credit funds on how long they need to upgrade their own systems (Article 10(11)).

Who is affected

Depositors at people’s credit funds, who for the first time get a regulator-side check on what their fund reports about them.
People’s credit funds, which will have to publicise the service and answer data requests. More importantly, they will be exposed whenever their reported deposit figures differ from customer passbooks.
Co-opBank and DIV, which get wider data access and, with it, named personal-data obligations.
Microfinance institutions remain in the system, but the deposit lookup and the customer-notice duty name only people’s credit funds.

Practical implications

Viewed as fintech, this is a supervisory-technology move. The data already flows to the SBV, and the circular turns depositors into a check on its accuracy. A fund that under-reports or hides deposits will be caught out by its own customers. A monthly summary to the Governor means patterns of mismatch at one fund will be visible centrally, not only to the local branch.

Funds should check that the deposit data they file reconciles with the passbooks and core-banking records they hand customers. They should also get ready for a stream of verification requests once the guideline names a start date.

Open questions

Channel. The circular does not say whether lookup will run through an SBV portal, an app, VNeID or the fund itself. The guideline will decide.
Start date and deadlines. Both are left to the guideline, which has not yet been published.
What “information related to deposits” covers. Balance, interest and term are likely, but the circular does not list the fields.
Microfinance customers are not mentioned in the lookup clause.

Sources

This post is general information, not legal advice.