Ho Chi Minh City · Vietnam and Southeast Asia
Bring the volume in, protect the book, and operate it properly.
Risk Nova Advisory is a founder-led boutique built on 25 years inside credit, risk and digital consumer finance in this region. We work at three points of a lending business: where the volume comes from, who you say yes to, and how the machine behind that answer is run.
The short version
A full-time CRO is expensive and slow to hire. A Big-Four engagement gives you slideware, not ownership. We offer a third path: the person who has built risk functions, sat across from regulators and run portfolios through real downturns, working inside your business and accountable for the outcome.
Three things decide a lending business, and we work on all three.
Where the volume comes from
Market entry, in-market business development and partnership building. We carry a product into this region, or turn a customer base already here into lending revenue.
- Market entry strategy and licensing
- In-market representation and BD
- Data-to-lending partnerships
- Customer selection and product design
- Commercial structuring
Who you say yes to, and what else can hurt you
Credit risk first, because it is the largest, and the risk function around it: appetite, governance, models and the reporting a board and a regulator will accept.
- Credit policy, scoring, limits and pricing
- IFRS 9 ECL and provisioning
- Risk appetite, framework and governance
- Operational, fraud and model risk
- Stress testing and capital planning
- Portfolio, board and regulator reporting
What happens after yes
The machine behind the decision. Approval operations, collections, recovery and fraud, owned as one thing because that is how losses actually arrive.
- Underwriting and approval operations
- Collections and NPL recovery
- Debt sale
- Fraud strategy and controls
- Reporting and portfolio review
Most partnerships fail on selection, not on access.
Getting a meeting with a lender is not hard. Getting that lender to keep buying is. Volume only stays on the table when the customers sent across actually perform, which makes selection a credit decision rather than a marketing one.
So we run partnerships the way a lender would. We set who qualifies, at what limit and at what price, before the first file moves. Then we ask the lender to send performance back, so the selection sharpens with every cycle.
This is where Build and Protect meet, and it is why the two sit in one firm.
In-market representation. For a lender, scoring vendor or platform that wants Vietnam and the region without first opening an office.
Data-to-lending build. For a business already holding a large customer base that wants credit or insurance revenue from it without becoming a lender.
How the work gets done
We build our own tooling. You are still buying the judgement.
Underwriting pipelines, scorecards, portfolio reporting, document extraction: we build and run these on our side of the work, so one senior person can carry more and you get answers in days rather than quarters. What reaches you is checked, signed and ours to answer for. Nothing goes near your production stack unless it has been through your own model governance first.
Four commitments that decide how an engagement runs.
You engage the principal directly. The person advising you is the person who has done the job, not a team being trained at your expense.
We work inside your business and own outcomes, not just deliverables. The test is whether your position is stronger when we leave.
No audit arm to cross-sell and no third-party software to place. The tooling we use is our own, it comes with the engagement, and it is never a licence you are steered into.
Based in Ho Chi Minh City, fluent in the local regulatory reality and in the language of international boards and investors.
Five kinds of business, one kind of problem.
Commercial and digital banks strengthening risk governance and meeting regulatory expectations.
Finance companies and digital lenders managing portfolio quality and credit risk at scale.
Platforms building lending and payments products that need risk designed in from day one.
International players assessing, entering or scaling across Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
Utilities, telcos, retailers and platforms holding a customer base that could carry credit or insurance.
Mandates run by the principal himself.
The founder
Rick Nguyen has been the CRO, and he has also built the business.
He has launched a digital bank and multiple credit businesses from zero to market, owned full P&L and led SBV licensing end to end. In every CRO seat he has owned the operations as well as the policy, which is the part most advisers have never run.
Currently
Founder and Principal, Risk Nova Advisory. Independent Director and Board Risk Chair at VTGS Securities. CRO to fintech platforms including Circle and Jenfi.