Environmental Sustainability in Vietnamese Commercial Banks: A Comparative Analysis of Banking Practices

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is becoming increasingly important for Vietnamese commercial banks as regulatory requirements expand and banks assume a greater role in green capital allocation and environmental-risk management. This study examines how environmental sustainability became embedded in the reported practices of Vietcombank, BIDV, and VPBank during 2023–2025. Using a qualitative longitudinal multiple-case design, nine bank-year sustainability disclosures were analyzed through deductive qualitative content analysis across five environmental-banking themes, while distinguishing commitments, implementation, and reported outcomes. The findings show increasing institutionalization of environmental governance, expansion of green-finance activities, and broader integration of environmental risks into credit processes. However, the three banks follow different institutional and financing pathways, while convergence in environmental screening is accompanied by uneven development of climate-risk analytics and portfolio-level measurement. Most importantly, evidence of commitments and implementation is more developed than comparable evidence of environmental outcomes, revealing a pattern of institutionalization ahead of outcome measurement. Accordingly, regulators should strengthen reporting comparability and climate-risk guidance, while banks should more closely connect governance and financing decisions with measurable portfolio-level environmental outcomes.