MFSAC shifts into market capture mode as strategy enters next phase
With a significant portion of its foundational work in place, the Malta Financial Services Advisory Council (MFSAC) is now preparing to pivot its national financial services strategy towards its next phase – one centred on market capture, competitiveness, and sustained growth.
Speaking on Campus FM Radio’s Business Frontiers in Malta, Pier Massa, who heads up the Programme Office, described the evolving focus of the strategy not as a conclusion of delivery, but as a transition point: “This foundation is the basis of the long-term build of Malta’s Financial Services sector and, in reality, is the beginning of the long-term journey.”
From foundation to activation
Over the past three years, the strategy has prioritised infrastructure, regulatory alignment, and institutional coordination. But as these building blocks mature, attention is increasingly turning to how they translate into tangible economic outcomes.
“As we move forward, I talk more about market capture,” Mr Massa explained. “How we translate the infrastructural investments that we've made into actually attracting foreign investment into the island... faster settlements, faster onboarding, simpler processes, less bureaucratic processes.”
This reframing signals a deliberate shift from system-building to market-facing execution. The next iteration of the strategy is expected to prioritise:
Conversion of capability into inbound investment
Acceleration of client onboarding and transaction speeds
Reduction of friction across the end-to-end value chain
Positioning Malta more assertively against peer jurisdictions
A foundation that is already delivering tangible change
Crucially, this shift is underpinned by a set of concrete advances that are already beginning to reshape the operating environment.
Around 70% of the strategy’s 79 projects have been delivered or are well progressed, creating a broad base of institutional and regulatory capability.
Some of these outcomes are highly visible – such as the launch of the Malta Business Wallet –while others are more structural but arguably more impactful. The harmonised regulatory reporting framework, for example, has aligned key authorities including the FIAU and MFSA, eliminating approximately 9,000 data points and streamlining compliance processes, with further work ongoing.
At the same time, the strategy has enabled the development of legal and regulatory frameworks in targeted niche areas such as family offices and aircraft leasing – segments explicitly identified as future growth sectors.
Other initiatives, such as the national payments hub, illustrate both the ambition and complexity of the programme. As Mr Massa observed, this remains “a very complex long-term initiative… one that I think we'll start to see some light shortly,” requiring alignment across institutions with differing objectives.
Taken together, these initiatives are less about isolated deliverables and more about creating the conditions for faster, more competitive market participation.
Refreshing the strategy: data, feedback, and friction points
The strategy refresh is not being approached as a reset, but as a targeted recalibration informed by both data and market feedback.
A central input is granular benchmarking, particularly through international frameworks such as the World Bank’s Business Ready 2025 report. The report is a granular benchmarking framework assessing the ease of doing business across three pillars – regulatory framework, public services, and operational efficiency across key economies globally. For Malta, the findings show that while overall performance is slightly above global averages and the country is classified alongside OECD high-income economies, it only achieves mid-tier quintile rankings; in financial services specifically, Malta performs relatively well on regulatory completeness but is below EU averages due to operational friction, fragmented processes, and repeated data requirements.
“When you look at this very detailed analysis of where we deliver and where we don't, that's a very good indicator of where the friction is from an ease of doing business perspective,” he noted.
“Our objective is for Malta to be a top quartile financial services jurisdiction.”
In parallel, MFSAC is intensifying structured engagement with market participants. The Program Management Office has already been meeting managing partners of leading legal and accounting firms, as well as CEOs of foreign direct investment companies, to identify operational barriers and opportunity areas.
This dual approach – external benchmarking and direct market dialogue – is shaping a more targeted view of where intervention is required to unlock competitiveness.
Maintaining momentum while shifting gears
A key design feature of the strategy refresh will be maintaining engagement across a complex delivery ecosystem while pivoting focus.
The governance model – bringing together 15 working groups and approximately 30 stakeholders at regular review sessions – will remain critical in aligning execution.
However, Mr Massa highlighted the importance of visible progress to sustain momentum: “If you don't show progress… people will get tired and the strategy won't go anywhere.”
Building a competitive European proposition
Looking ahead, the ambition is not only domestic transformation, but repositioning Malta within a changing European and global context.
“Europe is very determined to be much more competitive… Malta can be a very good example of how you can be much more entrepreneurial, much more agile, and much more fluid in building a competence to be able to build a business,” Mr Massa said.
The strategy refresh therefore places increasing emphasis on making Malta far more competitive by building on the island’s agility, responsiveness, and structural advantages to create a more entrepreneurial, efficient, and attractive environment for business. It aims to leverage the country’s scale to move faster than larger jurisdictions, strengthen a repeatable model of public-private collaboration, and position Malta as a practical testbed for new regulatory and business models. In doing so, Malta is seeking not only to sharpen its own competitive edge, but also to become a beacon for the rest of Europe to follow in demonstrating how a smaller jurisdiction can lead through speed, coordination, and innovation.
A proving ground for coordinated execution
Beyond its sectoral impact, the evolving strategy is also being framed as a broader proof point for coordinated national delivery.
“This exercise is showing that we can work together as private firms, government and regulators… the more we build our confidence in that area, the more likely we will be successful in delivering the strategy.”
As the MFSAC enters this next phase, the test will be whether the substantial institutional and regulatory effort of the past three years can be converted into measurable gains in investment attraction, ease of doing business, and international competitiveness.
The direction of travel is clear: from building the system to winning in the market.
The interview was conducted by Prof. Anne Marie Thake, Associate Professor from the Department of Policy, Politics and Governance, in the Faculty of Economics, Management and Accountancy, at the University of Malta.