"Malta's financial services industry has registered sustained growth in the overall ecosystem. This growth in the industry came from increases in investment services, insurance operations, retirement schemes, trusts, securitisations, new fund licences and financial institutions with year on year growth rates ranging from five per cent 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'. Almost 500 delegates attended the conference and included representatives from organisations based in 21 countries.
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. Suffice to say that last year FinanceMalta delegates and members attended 54 national and international events in all major financial centres including USA, 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 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. 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. There also needs to be stronger industry engagement with the regulator and policy makers to persuade financial services to innovate, and finally the industry needs to engage in a three-pronged political, regulatory and industry PR outreach programme to support key initiatives in mainstream communication channels.
The conference was also addressed Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, via a video message. He spoke about Malta's achievements in financial services and the digital economy, and its progress as a leader in DLT technology.
The morning session continued with two stimulating presentations and panel discussions on Cyber security and Bitcoin, Blockchain & Initial Coin Offerings.
Two presentations, one on RegTech and the other focusing on the EU supervisory framework brought the morning sessions to an end.
The afternoon continued with four workshops that ran concurrently where 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.
The final presentation followed by a discussion panel addressed The Future of Europe.
The main sponsor for this year's conference is the world's leading source of news and information for professional markets, Thomson Reuters. Other sponsors include 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.