For QA and software testing teams in banking, the pressure to deliver faster services without compromising accuracy, compliance or resilience continues to intensify.
At the Vietnamese banking institution VPBank, automation has become a core quality enabler, reducing manual errors, stabilising high-volume processes and accelerating testing and production workflows across the organisation.
Vietnam Prosperity Joint-Stock Commercial Bank, widely known as VPBank, is one of Vietnam’s leading commercial banks.
Headquartered in Hanoi, VPBank is the country’s largest non-state-owned bank, serving more than 30 million users through a network of over 80 local branches in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.
As its customer base and product portfolio expanded rapidly, the bank recognised early that traditional, manual processes would not scale without increasing operational risk and degrading service quality.
Digital journey
Since beginning its digital transformation in 2018, VPBank has automated more than 300 processes spanning customer onboarding, loan approvals, anti-money-laundering checks, document processing, customer service, compliance monitoring, reconciliation and reporting.
Before automation, much of this work relied on manual data entry and verification, creating bottlenecks, increasing error rates and forcing staff into regular overtime.
To address these challenges, VPBank took the strategic decision to build its own internal automation capability rather than relying entirely on external providers.
Via a partnership with company UiPath, the bank established a dedicated Robotic Process Automation department to design, test and deploy automation tailored to its core banking systems and operational workflows.
“In 2018, our automation journey at VPBank began as a one-man project handling simple data entry tasks. Today, our automation team has evolved to automate and manage complex, long-running processes, marking a dramatic increase in efficiency,” explained Viet Bui Ngoc, Head of the RPA Department at VPBank.
He said that, for QA and testing teams, owning the automation lifecycle proved critical. Internal development allowed VPBank to shorten delivery cycles dramatically and embed quality checks directly into automated workflows.
“Our automation journey at VPBank began as a one-man project handling simple data entry tasks.”
– Viet Bui Ngoc
Processes that previously took three weeks to outsource could now be developed internally up to ten times faster, accelerating both testing and production rollout.
Automation has had a measurable impact on operational quality and scalability. By automating the cross-checking of loan documents, customer information and transaction data, VPBank reduced processing times by a factor of ten while supporting transaction growth of around 30 percent per year.
The bank estimates these gains are equivalent to the capacity of 350 full-time employees, achieved without sacrificing accuracy or compliance, according to Nguyen Thi Tuyet Chinh, Director of the Northern Credit Administration Centre at VPBank.
“RPA has fundamentally transformed the way we operate—enabling us to scale efficiently, improve accuracy, and respond faster to customer needs, Thi Tuyet Chinh explained.
More importantly, it laid a strong foundation for our future direction, where advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and intelligent automation will drive even greater agility and innovation across the bank,” she added.
The QA impact extends beyond back-office processing into customer-facing operations. In VPBank’s Contact Center 247, customer requests such as credit limit increases or account unlocking were previously handled manually, requiring extensive cross-checks and coordination across departments. As volumes increased, this model became increasingly fragile.
By introducing automation into request handling, VPBank reduced manual effort while shortening end-to-end processing times. Today, more than 40 automation processes run in parallel within the contact centre, handling an average of 150,000 transactions per month and easing pressure on frontline staff.
“RPA has been instrumental in fostering a culture of continuous improvement at 247, enabling us to consistently identify and optimize business processes to shorten support SLAs and enhance the overall customer experience,” stressed Nguyen Thi Dung, head of contact center 247 at VPBank.
From a risk and compliance perspective, VPBank has also pushed automation further than many of its regional peers.
The bank became the first in Vietnam to fully automate its anti-money-laundering compliance programmes, freeing more than 400 employees to focus on higher-value activities while maintaining rigorous control over regulatory processes.
Looking ahead, VPBank is building on this QA-driven automation foundation by integrating artificial intelligence into its operating model.
With a dedicated AI team in place, the bank plans to trial agentic AI in 2025, starting with fraud-related customer support. The goal is to reduce resolution times by replacing paperwork-heavy processes with interactive, AI-driven communication.
“Leading in innovation isn’t just about improving efficiency, it’s about creating opportunities to shape the digital future of banking,” stressed Hoang Thi Thuy Ha, director of the Operational Excellence Center at VPBank.
“By integrating AI into our automation processes, we’re demonstrating a strategic vision to deliver transformative solutions, keep customers at the heart of everything we do, and create lasting value for the community,” Thi Thuy Ha concluded.
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