FinanceMalta 11th Annual Conference to discuss finance without frontiers

FinanceMalta’s annual conference this year will discuss global and domestic industry opportunities and challenges. Entitled Finance Without Frontiers, the finance and business conference will feature select local and international experts who will address delegates on contemporary and current topics affecting the financial services industry including sessions on business startups, GDPR, cyber security, MiFiD II and MiFiR.

The conference will kick off with a pre-conference networking event on 16th May and a fullday conference on 17th May at the Hilton Conference Centre.

Commenting about the annual conference, FinanceMalta Chairman, Kenneth Farrugia said that “during this year’s conference we will be discussing the challenges and opportunities that the domestic and global financial services sector is going through in view of new legislation on data protection, cyber security, and changes which will make the financial services industry more transparent. However, for this to happen, we need to harness the opportunities of the ever-chang- ing financial services industry.”

The finance conference will be chaired by Mr Farrugia and will be moderated by Michael Imeson, from the influential financial services magazine The Banker. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat will make the first keynote address followed by Helen Koepman, Deputy Head of Unit, Startups and Innovation from the European Commission.

Silvio Schembri, Parliamentary Secretary responsible for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation will discuss the current topic of Malta as a leader in DLT technology, which will be followed by a panel discussion on FinTech moderated by technology expert Dr Abdalla Kablan.

The morning session will continue with two stimulating presentations on Cyber security and Bitcoin, Blockchain & Initial Coin Offerings. This will be followed by a panel discussion which will be moderated by Dr Christopher Buttigieg, Director, MFSA with the participation of industry specialists Luke Scanlon, Luka Müller-Studer and Steve Tendon.

Two presentations, one on RegTech and the other focusing on the EU supervisory framework will bring the morning sessions to an end.

The afternoon starts with four workshops that run concurrently where delegates choose to attend any of the following discussion sessions that will tackle the following topics, GDPR, : MiFiD II and MiFiR, Payment Services Directive II, and The Insurance Distribution Directive.

The final presentation followed by a discussion panel will be discussing ‘BREXIT and The EU’s power of negotiation’.