"Vietnam is poised to pass a new decree that will bring the nation into line with its peers across APAC and internationally when it comes to personal data protection – and it’s providing a new impetus for businesses to look again at enhancing their data management."

Vietnam’s upcoming implementation of a Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) aligns it regionally and globally with the accelerating trend of data privacy legislation. A consistent theme is that it, along with other regional legislation, broadly aligns with standards in other global legislation – in this case, the EU’s GDPR.

There has been a lot of scandal-driven regulatory change in the last 10 years, this is no less true for the reforms to Interbank Offer Rate (IBOR). Benchmark rigging in the US$350 trillion interest rate markets was the catalyst for a move away from the British Banking Association’s London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) calculation to alternative Risk-Free Rates (RFRs). 

In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, regulators have, unsurprisingly, followed the lead of their central bank cousins. One consequence is that transformational regulation, like MAS 610 and 1003, has been delayed. This wise course of action affords banks the chance to ensure they have every opportunity to comply and avoid the consequences of not doing so. 

In my fourth post, I look at Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA). It broadly aligns with standards in other global legislation, albeit with some crucial differences such as control and access requests as opposed to the right to be forgotten, and Singapore’s limitations on transferring personal data overseas.