How to open an individual stock trading account as a foreigner in Vietnam

In the past, the process was quite complicated with more than 3 steps involving police records and sworn affidavits of your identity. Luckily, these days with the downward infusion of foreign investment in the indexes, brokerages are trying harder and harder to get foreigners to participate as individual investors. Now is the best time to be an independent stock trader in the Vietnamese indexes.

According to the brokers at ACBS (a division of ACB) these are the current requirements to open an individual stock trading account for a foreigner.

Required documents:

• 2 copies of your passport notarized by the local party office in District 1 (HCMC)

• Passport with at least 6 months validity

• Vietnamese visa in current standing (no restrictions on the length of validity)

There are 3 main steps in order to open your trading account

1. Open your cash account with your broker

2. Sign a securities contract with your broker

3. Apply for a trading code from the Vietnamese Security Depository Center


The data required is quite straight forward for steps one and two and most brokers will allow you to apply for both the cash account and the brokerage contract at the same time. If they don't it would be better to look for a more customer friendly broker.

As it stands now, most brokers will require the following info at the time of depositing cash or securities.

- You full name as stated on your passport

- Date of birth, place of birth

- Passport number, date of issue, place of issue

- Valid Vietnamese visa

- Permanent address

- Contact address

- Telephone and email

Trading Code is similar to what other countries would call a brokerage account number. However in Vietnam, each foreigner is tracked closely to insure they are not committing fraud or money laundering in their trading activities. There are other reasons, but it is not the time to get into them now. Safe to say that most of the corrupt trading practices in Vietnamese stocks are not occurring at the retail investor level. A better way to understand it is that your trades will go through a clearing house tracked with your own individual code which can be analyzed by anyone who has the need to know what trades you have made. There are creative ways around this, but it cannot be under your own name.

It takes about 5 working days to receive your Trading Code and costs about 300,000 VND. Some brokers will charge more, others less, but it won't be much different.


If you have any questions about the process of opening an account or which brokers will suit your needs, you can always contact me in the comments below.