Expectations that Bank of Valletta would pass with flying colours the latest round of bank stress tests carried out by the European Central Bank have now been confirmed.

This, of course, is good news, more so after the bad publicity generated recently by the saga of its Valletta Fund Management subsidiary. This very positive stress test result should also augur well for BoV’s intended further foray this year into the local bond market.

It seems that the European Central Bank is concerned only with the big fish. I say so because, according to a recent press release by the Malta Bankers’ Association, no less than 24 banks are licensed to carry on banking business in Malta.

Although most of these are licensed to take deposits from the public it surprises me that only very few of these take the trouble to publish their annual audited accounts in at least one of the daily newspapers.

It has become a tendency for banks merely to place their accounts on their website. While this satisfies legal requirements I question if this is satisfactory from the point of view of depositors. There must be many depositors who do not bother to look up such websites and even a good number who have no internet access whatsoever.

Gone are the days when banks were obliged by law to publish their annual audited accounts in at least two daily newspapers (one in Maltese and one in English) and also to display a summarised balance sheet and profit and loss account in each office.

I appreciate that, since my banking days, the technology has improved by leaps and bounds. However, is the depositor being adequately served by having to reply on obtaining essential financial information only through the websites of most of the licensed deposit taking banks?

If the ECB can cope with carrying out stress tests for only Malta’s two leading banks, would local depositors not be better served were the Central Bank of Malta or the Malta Financial Services Authority to conduct stress tests on all the other local banks, publishing their findings for the information of all depositors? If the work involved is too great, a start could be made with the banks established in recent years (say, over the past five years) as the probability is that the older established banks have a more solid equity base through a partial plough-back of accumulated profits.