“Malta’s financial services industry has registered sustained growth in the overall ecosystem. This growth in the industry came from increases of in investment services, insurance operations, retirement schemes, trusts, securitisations, new fund licences and financial institutions with year on year growth rates ranging from five to 17 per cent. Furthermore, last year Malta saw a total of 573 new notifications from international firms passporting to Malta.”
This was announced by Kenneth Farrugia, chairman of FinanceMalta in his inaugural address at FinanceMalta’s 11th annual conference entitled ‘Finance without Frontiers’, which was attended by almost 500 delegates and included representatives from organisations based in 21 countries.
Mr Farrugia went on to explain that the results achieved so far were driven by the various initiatives of the industry and the visibility programme achieved through the various events organised by FinanceMalta in an effort to sustain the growth of the industry.
Last year FinanceMalta delegates and members attended 54 national and international events in all major financial centres including the US, London, Switzerland, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Dubai among others. Furthermore, FinanceMalta’s digital initiatives helped to increase visits to FinanceMalta’s dedicated website by 33 per cent.
Going forward, Mr Farrugia expounded on the need of the industry to be more dynamic in working closely with education service providers to offer bespoke educational programmes as well as create an efficient process to recruit foreign nationals. He said that the industry also needs to increase its engagement with the banking sector and the Malta Financial Services Authority to ensure that the industry remains agile in servicing the growth objectives.
He continued that there also needs to be stronger industry engagement with the regulator and policy-makers to induce financial services innovation and, finally, the industry needs to engage into a three-pronged political, regulatory and industry PR outreach programme to support key initiatives in mainstream communication channels.
The conference was also addressed by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, via a video message, who spoke about Malta’s achievements in financial services and the digital economy, and its progress as a leader in DLT technology.
There were another presentations and panel discussions on cyber security and bitcoin, blockchain and initial coin offerings, on RegTech and another one focusing on the EU supervisory framework.
Four workshops were held concurrently in the afternoon. Delegates had the opportunity to attend any of the discussion sessions that tackled GDPR, MiFiD II and MiFiR, Payment Services Directive II, and the Insurance Distribution Directive.
A final presentation followed by a discussion panel addressed the future of Europe.
The main sponsor for this year’s conference was Thomson Reuters. Other sponsors included Konnekt, RiskCap International Ltd, Dolfin Asset Services Ltd, VacancyCentre, Fenech & Fenech Advocates, Alter Domus, Nicholls Moisa Ltd, Reyl & Cie (Malta) Ltd, Castille Resources and Boston Link.