Industry insights is a joint initiative between the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry and the Faculty of Economics Managment and Accountancy within the University of Malta, whose goal is to complement academic teachings with an industry perspective.  This positive initiative ensures that students have a better understanding of industry when they enter the labour market.   

As part of this initiative Bank of Valletta provided FEMA students with a practical session on how banks provide finance to start-ups and SMEs.  The session focused on the difficulties SMEs, and more so start-ups, face when accessing finance.  Ruth Camilleri from Bank of Valletta's SME finance team shared with the students her experience in dealing with SMEs and some of the common financial mistakes SMEs make when running their everyday business.  To present her case Ruth also gave practical examples of how SMEs and start-ups succeeded, and in some instances failed, to access bank financing.   

Mark Scicluna Bartoli, who runs the bank's EU Representative Office, provided the students an overview of EU funded risk sharing instruments, which are designed in collaboration with the European Union, to overcome barriers to access to finance.  Mark highlihgted how these EU risk sharing instruments play a key role in addressing a number of the market failures Maltese SMEs face when accessing bank financing. 

Since their launch in the Maltese market, demand for EU risk sharing products, such as the BOV JEREMIE and BOV JAMIE, has been on the increase.  This is evidenced by the recent top up of the BOV JAIME product which will now make available just over €80 million to Maltese and Gozitan enterprises.