Over the past 30 years, Malta has built a strong, performance-based Financial Services industry, attractive to a multitude of global players and providing a trusted and stable base for business. Malta has been no exception in facing challenges. In response to the Financial Action Task Force greylisting in July 2021, Malta responded with urgency, resulting in it being removed from the greylist by June 2022. Collaboration across all stakeholders, from Government to regulators and the sector participants was a critical enabler in ensuring a strong outcome. We realise, however, that this is not enough to make Malta a strong jurisdiction in a global and competitive environment. The island’s capabilities have been overtaken by countries that have leveraged smart technologies to build competitive advantage. While Malta retains strong fundamentals, we see the opportunity to target a new era of digitally enabled financial services and to re-assert Malta’s presence in a globally competitive marketplace and from a unique European perspective. The pandemic and the current geopolitical instability as well as the massive changes that FinTech and technology in general have introduced to business are transforming the way business is done, both within legacy institutions as well as across emerging actors in Financial Services. This sheer tsunami of change requires different collaborative responses at all levels, both within enterprises as well as within the public sector, not to mention the impact it will have on regulatory and policy approaches.

The objective of this Financial Services Strategy is to further strengthen Malta’s position and performance in a professional and regulatory compliant manner, creating a digitally enabled, easy to use financial system; this will drive this sector’s growth and, as a result, spur growth in other areas dependent on this sector.

During 2021, nine Working Groups set up by the MFSAC Council, including the Vertical Pillars, namely Banking and Payments, Insurance and Pensions, Capital Markets, Wealth Management, and Fintech and AI, as well as the Horizontal Enablers comprising of Bureaucracy, Taxation, HR & Education and Sustainable Finance completed their input to the strategy. The nine documents produced by each of these working groups were merged into one overall long-term strategy document for financial services.

Consultation took place with the Commissioner for Revenue, the FIAU, the MFSA and the MBR, as well as the Malta Stock Exchange, FinanceMalta and all private bodies such as the MBA, MIA, MIT and IFSP.

We are pleased to announce that the MFSAC Strategy Document is now ready to be launched. This event will serve to communicate the strategy, which includes some 177 initiatives, to the industry and the general public, as well as to thank all of the 102 professionals who were involved in its development.