Siew Cheong Keong, Chief Operating Officer Funds, who is responsible for Prudential's regional Asian operations, says: "HiPortfolio is our group's selected preferred solution for investment accounting and by adding Vietnam to our existing implementation sites, we have taken another step towards creating a regional platform, where we can derive further synergies and efficiencies in our processes."

As early as 2000, when DSTi licensed its Asset software to the Ho Chi Minh Securities Trading Center (HoSTC), the company has been active in Vietnam. Now, five years later the full potential for other DSTi solutions is coming to the fore. Analysts believe that the Vietnam's life insurance sector is set for massive expansion over the next three years. Under various agreements, the market is also set to open its doors to foreign insurance companies to offer their products on the Vietnamese market, like the Vietnam US-Bilateral Trade Agreement, which will allow US companies, now often operating in the form of joint venture companies to operate as wholly foreign-owned enterprises after December of this year.

Manulife, a DSTi client since 2001, was the first 100 per cent foreign-owned life insurance company to open an office in Vietnam in 1999. Manulife uses DSTi's Automated Work Distributor (AWD) software. Rhonda Lepsch, CEO for the Asia Pacific region at DSTi says: £As a leading vendor to the investment management industry we actively follow the market as and where it grows. All research shows that massive growth is forecasted for the Asia Pacific region, where we see growth rates that simply do not compare to those of the mature markets such as the US and Europe. We are very excited about the potential of the Vietnam market. The consistent GDP growth and many initiatives that the government now has underway will certainly contribute significantly to the growth of the capital markets in Vietnam," she says. "Additionally, DSTi is the only international vendor currently operating in the Vietnam whose solutions already meet the requirements of the domestic Vietnam market and also support the Quốc Ngữ system of Romanized writing."