Will AI Replace Finance Jobs in Viet Nam? Here’s What to Do in 2025

Viet Nam's finance sector faces a global AI tidal wave in 2025: Stanford HAI's 2025 AI Index documents record private investment and falling costs that make generative AI broadly accessible, while industry research shows over 85% of financial firms are already applying AI to fraud detection, forecasting and risk models - so Vietnamese banks, treasuries and corporate finance teams should treat this as a strategic, not speculative, shift (see Stanford's report and RGP's finance brief).

That means two clear priorities for VN professionals: build practical AI skills that pair human judgement with model outputs, and adopt governance-first practices so automation boosts trust, not risk.

For hands-on upskilling, the AI Essentials for Work bootcamp offers a 15‑week, workplace-focused curriculum to learn prompts and real business use cases (syllabus and registration available).

Picture turning messy spreadsheets into audit‑ready decks in minutes - an ordinary day's win that signals how quickly AI can change work.

“AI-focused skills will empower finance professionals to confidently work with AI technologies and bridge the trust gap by ensuring decisions made by AI systems are transparent and understandable.” - Morné Rossouw, Chief AI Officer, Kyriba

AI is quietly redrawing job descriptions across Viet Nam's finance teams: repetitive tasks like invoice capture, reconciliation and basic reporting are being handed to RPA, IDP and generative models so humans can focus on exceptions, controls and insight.

Local proof is compelling - Central Retail Vietnam automated invoice processing with an RPA+IDP platform and handled 1.8 million invoices that once consumed about 180,000 man‑hours from 75 accounting staff, cutting processing time by 50% and saving VND 10 billion over five years (see the Central Retail case study).

Generative AI and AI‑OCR add another layer, turning scanned invoices and messy spreadsheets into structured data and faster forecasts, while tools that auto‑author presentations let teams deliver audit‑ready decks in minutes (try Prezent for decks).

Still, change brings anxiety - almost a quarter of senior finance leaders worry about job risk - so the practical path for VN professionals is clear: adopt AI for routine work, upskill in oversight and start small with measurable KPIs to capture efficiency without losing control (see Scuti's guide on generative AI adoption).

“It's welcome that finance professionals have a largely positive attitude to technology and its impact on their daily work, freeing them to use their hard‑won skills to greater effect. Automation and AI are destined to deliver major gains for finance teams, liberating them for a far more strategic role so they are no longer seen as a back‑office support function. Some professionals may have genuine concerns about AI, but I believe such worries are misplaced.” - Tony Connolly, AccountsIQ CEO

In Viet Nam's 2025 finance floorplan, the safest seats belong to roles that anchor judgement, governance and complex decision‑making: risk managers, compliance and control leads, senior FP&A and treasury heads, and auditors who can interpret model outputs rather than just produce numbers - these jobs are less likely to be automated and are rising in value as firms hire AI‑literate specialists (Aon reports steep YOY growth for AI/machine‑learning and risk manager roles).

At the same time, transactional work - invoice capture, reconciliation and routine reporting - is morphing fast into automated flows handled by RPA/IDP and AI‑OCR, so staff who retool into oversight, exception handling and AI‑assurance will win the next decade.

Employers already prioritise AI skills and many businesses expect to pay premiums for them, so pairing domain finance expertise with prompt‑crafting or model‑validation ability is the practical hedge (see Vietnam's AI outlook and local IT hiring trends).

For a concrete skills step, learning the top AI tools that turn messy spreadsheets into audit‑ready decks is a quick way to shift from replacement risk to career leverage.

Practical action beats panic: finance professionals in Viet Nam should start with short, high‑impact learning, then apply projects that shift day‑to‑day work from manual to oversight.

First, master prompt techniques that make AI reliable for reports and formulas - consider a compact course like Prompt Engineering for Finance (1-hour self-paced course) to shave routine queries into repeatable steps.

Next, pick a hands‑on program that builds coding, ML and cloud practice - DataMites' intensive AI certification for Vietnam includes classroom/LVC training plus live project mentoring and cloud lab access, useful for turning messy spreadsheets into audit‑ready decks in minutes (DataMites Artificial Intelligence Course in Vietnam).

For teams owning KPIs and regulatory reports, pursue a finance‑centric analytics workshop like WrenAI for Financial Analytics (NobleProg) to learn KPI modelling, compliant dashboards and real‑time reporting.

Pair these steps with a one‑month “apply‑and‑measure” sprint for a single process (e.g., AP automation or monthly close) so gains become visible and defensible to managers - small pilots win buy‑in faster than broad promises.

Employers and finance teams in Viet Nam should treat 2025's sandbox era as a playbook, not a prediction: enrol internal pilots in the State Bank's fintech sandbox for credit‑scoring, Open API or P2P experiments, secure the SBV Certificate of Participation, and pair each trial with clear KPIs and strong data controls so innovation scales without surprise.

Use the sandbox to partner with local fintechs and universities, lean on the IFC framework's incentives to attract talent and capital, and bake governance into every AI rollout - think data localisation, IT resilience and consumer‑protection ropes that keep experiments “safe” while they prove value.

Practical moves include sponsoring a 6–12 month pilot with a fintech partner, mapping the regulatory path early (Decree No. 94 sets the fintech rules), and tapping IFC benefits where eligible so pilots can transition to production with tax and immigration fast‑tracks.

This approach turns the sandbox from a risk story into a recruitment and modernization win: a contained test track where a successful credit‑scoring model can move from lab to live customers with a regulator's blessing and measurable ROI. For guidance on the fintech sandbox and IFC incentives, see ConventusLaw's Decree 94 summary and PS‑Engage's sandbox overview.

“During the implementation, we will continue to review and update new products, services and business models in the banking sector to evaluate and propose expanding solutions eligible to participate in the testing mechanism.” - Pham Tien Dung, Deputy Governor, State Bank of Vietnam

Regulation in Viet Nam in 2025 is moving from strategy to practical levers that matter for finance teams: the National AI Strategy and a soon‑to‑be finalised Digital Technology Industry (DTI) Law establish a risk‑based governance model plus generous incentives - think reduced corporate tax, 150% R&D deductions and five‑year PIT breaks for top experts - while a parallel Draft Personal Data Protection law tightens data subject rights and researcher safeguards; together these rules aim to make experimentation lawful and bankable.

For firms that want to pilot credit scoring, treasury automation or AI‑assisted reporting, the new regulatory sandbox permits controlled trials (up to two years) under oversight and clear exit rules, so pilots can scale without legal guesswork.

Public funding and infrastructure support are part of the package too: a National Data Development Fund and targeted tax/land incentives are designed to lower the cost of building local models and secure compute.

The practical takeaway for finance leaders is straightforward: design pilots to meet sandbox requirements, document data flows for PDP compliance, and align projects to the DTI's compliance and incentive criteria so automation delivers measurable ROI rather than regulatory surprise (see Vietnam Briefing's overview and Lexology's DTI summary for details).

“Vietnam's biggest ‘superpower' is family values and respect for education. Vietnamese people excel in STEM fields, especially math and science. This makes Vietnam the second-largest supplier of software engineers in the world – a fact that few people know about. With this potential, we believe that Vietnam is an ideal place for NVIDIA to develop R&D centers and build a strong AI ecosystem here.” - Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA

Viet Nam's labour market in 2025 supplies a deep pool of people for finance roles, but the picture matters: official quarterly data puts labour force participation at about 68.2% (Q2 2025) while World Bank/ILO series and yearly estimates show a higher 2024 figure near 73.7%, so depending on the series a swing of five percentage points can mean millions of workers shifting in or out of the active pool - and employers should plan for that scale when hiring or reskilling (see the GSO/TradingEconomics update and World Bank trend).

Employment remains broad (around 52.0 million employed in mid‑2025) with low headline unemployment (~2.2%), yet past shocks like COVID‑19 revealed persistent vulnerabilities in informal work and skill mismatches that make targeted training essential (NSO recommendations highlight upgrading skills and support for vulnerable groups).

For finance teams, the takeaway is practical: there's ample talent, but recruitment and compensation strategies must account for competing demands (formal vs informal, entry vs specialist AI skills), offer clear upskilling pathways, and price premiums for AI‑literate finance hires so firms don't lose trained staff to higher‑paying tech roles; start by benchmarking against public labour stats and focus initial hiring on candidates who combine finance domain knowledge with demonstrable AI or data‑analytics capability.

Concrete pilots across Viet Nam show how AI is moving from lab experiments into finance-ready services: NVIDIA's December 2024 push - an MOU to open a Vietnam R&D Center and AI data center plus its acquisition of VinBrain - signals major private capital and talent commitment, while the FPT–NVIDIA “AI factory” in Hanoi pairs curriculum, labs and a target pipeline of some 30,000 learners to feed local R&D and enterprise projects (Vietnam Briefing coverage of AI initiatives in Vietnam finance).

Domestic integrators are already weaving that capacity into finance workflows: Viettel and other local firms use NVIDIA‑backed tooling for speech recognition, eKYC and document digitisation, and industry events hosted with distributors like ADG spotlight AI for banking and insurance.

The practical lesson for finance teams is simple - use these pilots as blueprints: run a contained R&D-to-pilot path (model, data, governance), measure KPIs, and partner with R&D hubs so a successful credit‑scoring or document‑processing model moves to production with local compute and talent support (NVIDIA press release on the Vietnam R&D Center and AI data center).

“We are delighted to open NVIDIA's R&D center to accelerate Vietnam's AI journey.” - Jensen Huang, NVIDIA

A practical 2025 roadmap for finance workers and employers in Viet Nam blends measured pilots, talent partnerships and governance: first, pick one high‑impact use case (AP automation, credit scoring or treasury forecasting) and run it as a controlled pilot inside the new regulatory sandbox - a trial window designed to test innovations for up to two years - so results and risks are visible to regulators and managers (Vietnam AI regulation overview).

Fund the pilot by tapping DTI incentives where possible (R&D deductions and expert PIT breaks) and partner with local R&D hubs and training pipelines - NVIDIA/FPT initiatives and national centres are already scaling talent and compute - so teams can hire or reskill quickly rather than chase scarce senior engineers (AI for Vietnam research and talent programs).

Build governance and data‑protection into day one to satisfy the forthcoming PDP and DTI rules, measure clear KPIs (cost per invoice, close cycle time, false positives in credit models) and use industry events and playbooks to shorten learning curves - AI Summit demos and local integrators offer repeatable patterns that turn pilot wins into reliable production services (AI Summit 2025 transformation roadmap).

The aim: small, measurable experiments that protect customers, reward staff who upskill, and convert one successful pilot into a scalable, governed capability that changes how finance creates value.

“Vietnam's biggest ‘superpower' is family values and respect for education. Vietnamese people excel in STEM fields, especially math and science. This makes Vietnam the second-largest supplier of software engineers in the world – a fact that few people know about. With this potential, we believe that Vietnam is an ideal place for NVIDIA to develop R&D centers and build a strong AI ecosystem here.” - Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA

Conclusion: the choice for finance professionals in Viet Nam in 2025 is clear - treat AI as a tool to amplify judgement, not a threat to livelihoods, and act now with focused, measurable steps: pick one high‑value use case (remember Kearney's finding that ~80% of value comes from ~20% of use cases), run a contained pilot with clear KPIs, and build practical skills that pair domain expertise with prompt‑crafting and model oversight.

Employers and workers can mirror EY's playbook by creating an “AI value realization” project to test, measure and scale, while prioritising a reskilling plan that maps tasks at risk and the human skills needed to supervise and improve models.

For immediate, career‑ready training, consider a workplace‑focused program such as the Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus to learn prompt design and real business use cases and to turn messy spreadsheets into audit‑ready decks in minutes; pair that learning with short on‑the‑job pilots, a mentor inside finance, and a written playbook for data governance so wins are defensible to managers and regulators.

The practical payoff is simple: small, measured experiments plus targeted reskilling will protect jobs, raise bargaining power, and make Vietnamese finance teams the architects of trustworthy, value‑creating automation rather than its victims - a realistic path that starts with one pilot and one new skill at a time (Kearney Southeast Asia AI study: Kearney Southeast Asia AI study, EY AI value realization playbook: EY AI value realization playbook for industrials, Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus: Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus).