Finance Ministry Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech yesterday set a goal for Malta to become a key regional player in the financial services sector by 2015, by which time, he predicted, the ever-growing sector will have become a key pillar of the country’s economy.

He was speaking at the launch of the FinanceMalta Foundation – an initiative between the private sector, the government and the Malta Financial Services Authority in its capacity as the sector’s regulator.

Mr Fenech also hailed the financial services sector as being increasingly important for the development of the country’s economy. Today, he pointed out, the industry accounted for no less than a 12 per cent direct and indirect contribution to the country’s gross domestic product.

The sector’s gross added value component, meanwhile, reached EUR208 million by the end of 2006, representing added value to the tune of EUR40,000 per employee.

The 6,000 or so employees also helped the sector’s productivity grow by 37 per cent last year.

After three years of work, the FinanceMalta Foundation was established yesterday with the objective of promoting and enhancing Malta’s fast-developing financial services

sector.

Among other things, the foundation will raise the profile of Malta’s financial services sector both locally and internationally, as well as develop synergies between local players for the benefit of the sector at large.

The initiative will include both Malta’s large and small financial services players and will provide marketing initiatives that highlight Malta’s excellence in financial services.

To begin with, this is expected to be done by networking activities, an important means of reaching the international industry’s players that matter, the publication of a Doing Business in Malta guide and industry updates, as well as a website and other marketing initiatives to be developed.

FinanceMalta’s first chairman, Joe Zammit Tabona, who also serves as chairman of the Malta Stock Exchange, observed how the development had been on the cards for some time, and that yesterday’s event represented the coming to fruition of years of hard work.

Mr Zammit Tabona added that the development had come at an opportune time, with Malta about to adopt wide-ranging EU legislation related to the sector, and with the adoption of the euro just around the corner.

The financial services sector, he added, has to date been relatively successful in promoting Malta as a centre of excellence, but so far this has been done by individual firms and the MFSA in something of a disparate manner.

FinanceMalta will instead group all such efforts under a single umbrella and focus such efforts towards a common goal. As such, the foundation is expected to develop into an important component of the local financial services sector.

MFSA chairman Joe Bannister, who also spoke briefly yesterday, urged Malta’s financial services players to ensure that the momentum achieved to date in the sector was maintained, and pledged that the MFSA, which will have two members on the foundation’s board of governors, would give the initiative its full support.

Malta’s competitiveness in the sector has been placed in a new light since EU accession and the opening up of the sector to the 500 million-strong EU market, while new technologies such as the internet and e-trading have presented both opportunities and new competition – from the EU as well as globally.

Mr Fenech added that the brand of Malta must be instantly recognisable to the industry’s players and to this effect, the foundation would bring together and harness the resources of the regulator, the government and the private sector.

The board of governors will be composed of four government representatives and four representatives from the private sector. The government will provide the initial funding to get the foundation up and running, while the funding of future promotional campaigns would be shared between the two parties.

The private sector would, at its own expense, finance two permanent employees to man the foundation.