The Malta Business Registry (formerly the Registry of Companies), will be issuing certificates entirely on blockchain by the end of the year, offering features which will be world firsts, Parliamentary Secretary Silvio Schembri told parliament on Tuesday.
Mr Schembri was piloting a Bill for the transposition of the second EU Payment Services Directive into Maltese law. The directive will standardise regulations for banks and for smaller payment service providers. The amendments affect the Banking Act and the Financial Institutions Act.
Among the more significant changes are new powers to the Malta Financial Services Authority which will allow it to act more quickly in cases demanding that action be taken, but not meriting the withdrawal of a licence.
Dr Schembri said that the government is taking steps to address money laundering, despite the “unjust criticism” which continued to be aimed at it. All of the proposals in the National Risk Assessment on the subject had been implemented.
The MFSA will be establishing a specialised team to counter crimes in the financial services sector, allocating more manpower and providing training to new and current staff.
A consultative body will be tasked with developing a national financial services strategy to guide the sector’s development in Malta over the coming decade. Although there had been initiatives, he said, these initiatives had so far been developed piecemeal.
The consultative body would also allow the government to “keep its finger on the pulse” of the goings-on in the sector.
Need for autonomy for the regulator
Opposition MP Kristy Debono argued that strengthening the MFSA and updating legislation was useless if the autonomy of the respective institutions could not be assured.
The banking sector was facing new challenges, having to deal with a diminished national reputation in a context where international regulators were insisting that banks carry out extensive due diligence on countries where they set up operations.
The loss of BOV’s last US dollar correspondent bank, ING Bank, had been foreshadowed by the Opposition for years, as the government’s attention had repeatedly been drawn to the fact that agreements with correspondent banks were being lost and new relationships were not being created to replace them.
These new challenges needed to be addressed in order to restore Malta’s reputation. However, operators in the sector were preoccupied that, if concrete steps were indeed being taken, the effects of these steps were not being felt.
Ms Debono made reference to the leaked correspondence between MFSA and Bank of Valletta. Bank of Valletta, she said, was given a week to agree to a “hefty overhaul” of its operations. She questioned whether the government should remain the largest shareholder of BoV, whether the perception of political influence in the Bank’s operations was being tackled, and what the next steps should be for the bank.