In today’s financial industry, Fintech (financial technology) has showed its role of an innovation-driving area, which can bring outstanding changes to the traditional financial market. This article will briefly introduce Fintech as well as its development in Vietnam. Besides, the research also provided a survey on experts’ opinions on the challenges to the promotion of Fintech application for the modernization of the banking-finance system in Vietnam. The survey results of 40 experts in banking with knowledge of Fintech identify five challenges faced by Fintech companies in Vietnam: (1) legal corridor; (2) infrastructure; (3) Fintech companies; (4) customers; and (5) human resources. From these five challenges/barriers, there are 14 detailed aspects. The results of the expert survey using descriptive statistics show that all five factors are assessed to be low and need to be better addressed in the future. The authors suggest several solutions for further development of Fintech to support the modernization of the banking-finance system in Vietnam: (1) quickly complete the regulatory framework; (2) introduce policies on tax exemption; (3) promote research and application of the benefits of block-chain technology; (4) utilize the abilities of the human resources; and (5) actively promote and popularize knowledge about Fintech.

The study examines the impact of international integration on Vietnam's rural and urban income inequalities using the regression model. The data used for this study is based on the results of the Vietnam Household Living Standards survey from 2008 to 2016 of the General Statistics Office. These surveys conducted nationwide with a sample size of 46,995 households in 3,133 communes/wards which were representative at national, regional, urban, rural and provincial levels. The level of international economic integration used in the study is the proportion of import and export turnover of GDP, the proportion of FDI and GDP by province. Due to the heterogeneity and unobservableness of the single observant in the data set, we selected the models of random and fixed effects. The research results show that during the economic integration process, the Export/GDP factor is negatively related to income inequality. The remaining factors (GDP per capita, FDI/GDP, Educational level of households, Percentage of internet users, Aggregation of foreign cash inflow and GDP of the province) are all positively related to income inequality. The findings help assess the impact of international integration on rural-urban income inequality, but also provides a concrete basis to help policymakers address income inequality in the integration process.

This paper aims to not only investigate the nature of financial security and its measurement, but also to compare financial security level in 629 listed companies divided into four different industries (materials, industrials, health care, and consumer goods) before building a theoretical framework and regression models to examine the determinants of financial security. By gathering 2,167 financial statements published in Vietnamese Stock Exchange during eight years from 2012 to 2019, with the support of STATA, the research results indicate that six different internal factors, which are liquidity, profitability, firm size, debt management ratios, asset management ratios, and cash flows, explain 77.7% the change of financial security ratio and 3.4% the change in sustainable growth ratio. Specifically, while firm size has a positive impact on sustainable growth ratio but a negative impact on financial security ratio, deb management and profitability have an insignificant influence on the financial security level. Furthermore, an increase in asset management ratios would result positively in both two dependent variables whereas a rise in sustainable growth and a decline in financial security ratio are expected to witness if there is an increase in cash flows.

Environmental pollution and climate change in Vietnam are now becoming a major concern. This situation is increasing the pressure on the companies to improve their social responsibility in production and business activities and disclose the environmental information to meet the requirements of stakeholders. This study investigates the internal and external factors of the company that affects the environmental information disclosure of listed companies on the Vietnam stock market as business sector, firm size, corporate manager perceptions, profitability, financial leverage, community pressure, pressures from stakeholders, government pressure influencing environmental information disclosure. Analytical data collected through the survey of 120 listed companies on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange (HOSE). By testing Cronbach's Alpha, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and logistic regression analysis, the results of the study show that the level of environmental information disclosure of listed companies on the stock market in Vietnam depends heavily on government regulations, followed by the pressure from stakeholders, community pressure, views of business managers, companies size, business sector, and particularly profitability and financial leverage factors that have a negative relationship with environmental information disclosure.

The research aims to investigate the determinants of the financial performance of 1343 Vietnamese companies categorized into six different industries listed on the Vietnamese Stock Exchange over a four-year period from 2014 to 2017 using STATA software. Those determinants include firm size, liquidity, solvency, financial leverage, and financial adequacy while the financial performance is evaluated by three different ratios: return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and return on sales (ROS). The research results from these companies during the given period indicate that: (1) Firm size has a positive impact on both ROA and ROS, especially ROA but it has the opposite effect on ROE, (2) Adequacy ratio impacts positively on ROA and ROS but negatively on ROE, (3) Financial leverage considerably negative influences on ROE and ROS but positively impacts on ROA, (4) Liquidity has a positive effect on both ROA and ROE but a negative one on ROS and (5) Solvency has a positive impact on ROA and ROS but the negative impact on ROE. Furthermore, agriculture accounted for the highest percentage of profitability at the beginning, which was replaced by service for ROA but manufacture for ROE from 2016 to 2017 as opposed to the least in transportation.