“Our overarching goal is to make NinjaRMM available to everyone in the EMEA market,” said Andre Schindler, NinjaRMM General Manager and VP Strategic Partnerships. “MultiPoint is an extremely reputable partner with strong visions and dedication to the MSP market. We are extremely excited to be working with them to make NinjaRMM the leading remote IT management solution in those regions.”

Furthermore, the company recently moved into a larger office for its Berlin-based EMEA headquarters and has expanded staff. In addition, they are planning to enter the French market.

“IT service providers in EMEA have a real need for expanded remote monitoring and management capabilities to keep their clients operating securely and running at full speed,” Mr Schindler said. 

“It is rewarding to see NinjaRMM’s unique mix of powerful functionality and easy-to-use UI clearly resonating. Our ambition is to deliver the best product and service in our class all across EMEA, and strategic partnerships with distributors like MultiPoint are critical to us continuing to hit very aggressive growth goals,” added Mr Schindler. 

The post NinjaRMM partners with MultiPoint, eyes Malta expansion first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The project was launched by Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation Silvio Schembri and Parliamentary Secretary for European Funds and Social Dialogue Aaron Farrugia.

The lack of women participation in the IT sector is a problem experienced all across the European Union, and the whole world, nowadays. In 2017, the employment rate for men in this sector in the European Union was 76.9%, while for women it was 65.3%. Therefore, the target for 2020 in the EU is to reach 75% for both genders.

The initiative will be implemented in many countries, like Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Spain with €2.7m as the total budget allocated for this purpose. Out of this fund, Malta can call for €346,672 between September 2018 and August 2021.

The project is hoped to develop digital competencies and employability of young women vulnerable of getting out of a job, as well as to provide innovative solutions to increase the numbers of young women in ICT careers and in the digital economy. Special focus will fall on unemployed young women, women returning to work after maternity leave and women coming from low income or disadvantaged families. The main tools used are awareness-raising, skills assessment, innovative partnerships with employers, development of a new online employability profiling tool and training in digital jobs, according to the DOI release.

“As a country, we have improved a lot within the digital space, now becoming a main point of reference, yet we are still lagging behind in women participation. If addressed now, the digital sector could be the first sector where we could see women on par with men”, said Mr Schembri.

“This is an exciting time for women. After registering a spike in the number of women elected to the European Parliament, I look forward to the next legislature to see the fruit of the positive measures being taken locally to increase the number of women in the Maltese Parliament”, said Mr Farrugia.

“It is encouraging to see the government fully committed to reducing the digital divide and organisations coming together today to support this collaborative framework. Thanks to this commitment we can ensure that women and young girls are truly allowed to decide their future and regain their destiny” said Dana Farrugia the CEO at Tech.MT, an organisation launched by the Malta Chamber of Commerce in cooperation with the government, aiming to help support further growth of the local technology sector.

The post Malta launches EU-funded Women4IT project first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“As a Service Desk Technical Officer, I was tasked with tending to daily support tickets created by users,” Mr Zammit said. “As a Systems Engineer, I work with maintaining and improving the existing IT-infrastructure and I’m also involved in IT related projects,” he added.

Although Mr Zammit knew that this move would represent a significant challenge, according to the press release, the extra push by his colleagues helped him to grow and adapt to his new position.

It was of fundamental importance also the relationship between Mr Zammit and his manager, which made this shift of roles easier and less stressful, he admits. “I have a great relationship with my manager, we give each other feedback on a weekly basis, which helps in improve and learn from previous experiences,” he commented.

Mr Zammit underlined how worth was this change for him and for his career. In addition, he said that Betsson is the perfect place to find room grow and develop, as it happened to him, as the press release says.

The post Betsson Group names new systems engineer first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Economy and Innovation Silvio Schembri launched the initiative, which is done through a collaboration with Malta Business Network, with the involvement of stakeholders active in the industry.

Since the lack of female participation in the sector is a challenge across Europe, with this move, Malta is hoping to strengthen its position on a global scale further. Despite comprising 52% of Europe’s population, women only hold 15% of ICT-related jobs in the continent, which figure is even lower for Malta: 2.7%.

“The past few years have seen an unprecedented rise in digital and communications technologies, which, together with the digital economy, have dramatically changed every aspect of life as we know it,” Mr Schembri said. At the same time, the skills and competency levels of ICT professionals have undergone a substantial deficit, which issue the government hopes to remedy through higher female participation in this industry, the parliamentary secretary added.

Mr Schembri also noted that Malta was the first European Union member state who launched a National eSkills Strategy, aspiring to address the need for continuous professional development and upskilling specialisation of the workforce in the sector.

The parliamentary secretary also underscored the importance of making existing initiatives more accessible to young women. “We need to collectively strive to end gender stereotyping and cultural discouragement which negatively affects our young women and their opportunities in the digital labour market,” Mr Schembri concluded.

Efforts to include women to a higher ratio in the IT industry appear to come in time. On the one hand, women have traditionally been discouraged from choosing a career related to engineering or information and communications technology globally. On the other hand, the pay gap has been significant between men and women internationally, favouring men over women in the same positions; an issue that is recently being addressed on a broader scale by companies and legislators.

The post Maltese initiative aims to attract more women to IT jobs first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Bank of Valletta Group had a profit before tax of €71.2m in the year ending on 31 December 2018, after providing for a litigation provision of €75m, according to an announcement today by BOV. Profit before deducting provision thus amounted to €146.2m, a year-on-year increase of 5.8%.

Pre-tax return on equity stated before the litigation provision was of 14.9% in 2018, dropping from the preceding year’s 16.5%. This same ratio, reported net of tax, amounted to 9.9% per annum, as compared to a ratio of 7.3% for banks in the eurozone, according to the press statement. The Group’s Core Equity Tier One ratio rose to 18.3, from 16.1% in December 2017.

BOV sees that the main driver for its results is a sustained demand for credit in the local market — especially in terms of home loans, as well as corporate and SME lending.

Gross advances to customers reached €4.6bn, an increase of 3%. BOV said that income from credit cards and payments recorded “satisfactory growth”, without giving an exact rate in its press release. Customer deposits were at €10.4bn, while total group assets stood at €12.1bn, at the end of the year.

‘Challenging’ year behind amid restructuring

Despite the results, that the financial institution tagged as “strong”, BOV says it left behind a truly challenging year. “These challenges ranged from the entry of new players into the financial services industry to comply with new regulation such as GDPR and MiFID ii, including the necessary IT development and the training of staff,” says Deo Scerri, Chairman of BOV.

The chairman underlined that the institution grabs challenges by the horns, making efforts to turn them into growth and building on the results by investing in the future. The group’s pipeline contains “heavy investment” in IT and fintech solutions, as well as focus on strengthening its capital buffers and on giving strategic priority to increasing its anti-financial crime and cyber defence mechanisms.

Although the press statement does not make mention of exact examples related to IT security, such commitment comes timely after BOV has recently been involved in a cyber hacking attempt. The attack the bank’s systems went under in mid-February forced operations to be shut down. BOV found that eleven payments had been initiated to foreign payment accounts in a total value of €13m. BOV asked for the cancellation of transfers and requested them to be reversed. However, news reports suggest it is difficult to say when the funds will be restored, and whether they can be restored in their entirety.

BOV says that during the course of the last year, they continued restructuring the business model, with the objective of lowering risk profile.

“The programme is multi-faceted and includes the winding down of certain business lines, the re-dimensioning of others, the revision of the Risk Appetite Framework, the enhancement of risk policies and comprehensive training programmes covering the entire organisation from the Board of Directors downwards,” the BOV press statement says.

BOV pays out no dividend for 2018

Confirming an earlier announcement, the press statement quotes the chairman as saying that the Board of Directors resolved not to pay out or recommend any cash dividend for the financial year 2018.

Explaining the decision, the board mentions “uncertainty arising from a number of legacy litigation cases”, which the group says led to the board giving up on “top priority to capital conservation, despite its confidence in the robustness of its legal position.” The bank says that to avoid future unexpected losses “the most efficient way of strengthening capital is to reinvest profit in the business, rather than paying it out in the form of a dividend,” the press statement records.

“It is always wise to sacrifice short term benefits — in this case, the payment of a cash dividend — in the interest of long term stability. And that is exactly what the Board did when it decided against a cash dividend payout for 2018,” BOV says.

However, the board says it will make a bonus share issue of one new share for every ten shares held by investors, which, despite not constituting a cash dividend, the group believes may offer “some value to shareholders, even in the form of possible tax benefits.”

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