SHB review: services, fees, pros and cons

Saigon – Hanoi Commercial Joint Stock Bank — universally known as SHB — traces back to 1993 as Nhơn Ái Rural Commercial Bank in Cần Thơ, before being renamed and relocating its headquarters to Hanoi in 2006. It listed on the Hanoi Stock Exchange (HNX) in 2009 and transferred its listing to the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) in October 2021, trading under ticker SHB. The bank is chaired by Đỗ Quang Hiển — also chairman of T&T Group, one of Vietnam's large private conglomerates spanning real estate, retail and industry — whose family holds a minority stake alongside T&T Group itself; no single shareholder controls the bank outright, and SHB has publicly said it is seeking a long-term foreign strategic investor within the 30% foreign-ownership cap that applies to Vietnamese banks. A defining episode in SHB's history was its 2012 merger with Habubank, a distressed Hanoi lender — the first landmark voluntary bank restructuring completed in Vietnam, which SHB absorbed without disruption to depositors. By year-end 2025, SHB reported total assets of roughly VND 892.6 trillion, placing it among Vietnam's largest joint-stock banks, and in 2021–2023 it sold 50% of its consumer-finance arm, SHB Finance, to Thailand's Krungsri (Bank of Ayudhya, part of Japan's MUFG group) — a notable international tie-up for a domestic Vietnamese lender.

For a foreign buyer, SHB sits in the domestic-bank category rather than the international-bank category — a distinction that matters at the financing stage of a Hanoi purchase. Verifying any bank's current standing and licensing is part of standard due diligence before you commit funds.

Being headquartered in Hanoi rather than Ho Chi Minh City gives SHB a practical density of branches in the city where our buyers transact, but it does not change the underlying service model. Opening a personal VND account requires a valid visa or Temporary Residence Card (TRC) plus your passport, presented in person at a branch — there is no remote or pre-arrival onboarding. Once open, the account handles day-to-day payments and receiving funds, though most buyers still route the purchase price itself through a formal currency transfer into Vietnam rather than relying on the account alone.

On financing, SHB does not run a dedicated mortgage programme for non-resident foreign buyers — consistent with the near-universal position of Vietnamese domestic banks. Where SHB is more likely to appear in a foreign buyer's file is on the developer side: like other large joint-stock banks, it can be named as the guarantee-issuing institution behind a bank guarantee for an off-plan project, and its branches can issue the bank certificate that lawyers or the Land Registration Office sometimes request to evidence funds. SHB itself is not a party to your Sales & Purchase Agreement, and none of this changes the underlying ownership rules — 50-year foreign tenure and the 30% building quota under the Housing Law 2023 — which sit with the developer and the title, not with your choice of bank. Because SHB's own paperwork remains Vietnamese-first, most foreign buyers pair the bank relationship with independent legal counsel for contract review — see our review of VILAF as an example of a Vietnam-qualified firm used to foreign-buyer files.