“I am deeply honoured to have been elected a Fellow of the CII as this represents the culmination of an entire career working in the financial services sector, and serves as recognition of my continued commitment to maintaining the highest standards in my profession,” Ms Azzopardi told Business Malta.

“I also hope that this award goes on to encourage more women to pursue this designation, as well as take on directorship positions in the insurance sector, which is what I plan to pursue in the next phase of my career,” she added.

Sian Fisher, CEO of the Chartered Insurance Institute presented Ms Azzopardi with the Fellowship certificate in London. Ms Fisher said that attaining esteemed fellowship status demonstrates a high level of commitment to the insurance profession, according to the press statement.

Ms Azzopardi started her financial services career in London when joining the Post Office and British Telecoms Pension Fund Management Company as Compliance Officer. Later, she became a financial advisor with companies of the Lloyds Banking Group and Zurich Financial Services.

After returning to Malta, she worked for Middlesea Insurance as Head of Life Sales, before becoming Head of Sales and Marketing for Mid-Med Bank. When Mid-Med Bank was acquired by HSBC, she became Senior Marketing Manager for Wealth Management and President of the HSBC Banking on Women Foundation that promoted the professional advancement of women at the bank.

She was also the founding chief officer of the Munich Re investment subsidiary based in Malta, where she worked as the Investment Manager and Deputy COO. She is a visiting lecturer at the University of Malta.

She was elected Vice President of the National Council of Women for six years. She has been an active volunteer in protecting consumer rights for the last seven years and is currently President of the Association for Consumer Rights and a Malta Representative on the European Consumer Consultative Group, the press statement adds.

The post UK’s CII elects Maltese professional as Fellow first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

After abandoning the UK market, ComeOn will still hold licences in Malta, Sweden, Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein — Germany’s northernmost state —, as well as a sports betting licence in Poland.

Tagging the UK market as a “very mature” and “highly-competitive” one, ComeOn CEO Lahcene Merzoug says the industry is shaken by “financial risks” and “uncertainty”. Additionally, Mr Merzoug says the “UK-licence has lost its symbolic value”, which used to be a must-have for a firm to be considered as “credible”.

“Today we hold licences in many European countries and given that the United Kingdom has never been a big market for us, it is a wise move to put our focus elsewhere”, the CEO adds.

Although Mr Merzoug does not make mention of the lurking Brexit around the corner, uncertainty has spiked in many industries as pundits seem unable to put their fingers on what would happen to the United Kingdom post-Brexit.

ComeOn’s online gaming portfolio via mobile, tablet and computer includes brands primarily in casino and sports betting.

The post ComeOn leaves UK market 59 days prior to Brexit deadline first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Aspire Global plans broadening its B2B-offering to additional fields within iGaming, which the company says is in line with its long-term growth plan.

“Aspire Global is excited about the opportunity to extend our offering to current and potential partners in the UK. Having a broad license is a competitive advantage enabling us to gain market share in regulated markets, all in line with our long-term growth plan”, said Tsachi Maimon, CEO at Aspire Global.

The post Aspire Global gets UK bingo licence first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The summit provided insight into various initiatives and projects undertaken by Maltese research and businesses, as well as the innovation support available through Malta Enterprise and the Malta Council for Science and Technology (MCAST). It also touched on R&D and innovation-related progress at the Malta Life Sciences Park, Trade Malta, and the University of Malta, according to the press statement

The representatives from Malta Enterprise and MCAST took part in the Innovation Funders meeting, which brought together top-level attendees involved in innovation support from over 30 countries, the EUREKA network and the European Commission, as the press release says.

The post Malta attends EUREKA to raise R&D, innovation profile first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

An airside land allocation has been assigned for Britten-Norman at the Safi Aviation Park (SAP) after discussions with the Malta Enterprise and Malta Industrial Parks. The Maltese government has additionally invested in the building of new hangars at the SAP through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) scheme.

“Malta aims to develop into a fully-fledged aviation centre that supports the entire spectrum of aviation-related services. We are committed to continuing to build a cluster of quality and Britten-Norman’s addition is a testament to the potential of our jurisdiction,” said Christian Cardona, Minister for the Economy, Investment and Small Business of Malta.

The aviation cluster in Malta employed a staff of 1,409 by the end of April 2019, which represents an increase of 5.4% as compared to the same month in the previous year. The Maltese government expects the deal to support the growth of the aviation cluster further through the 14 new jobs the UK firm will create.

Britten-Norman has applied for approvals from Transport Malta’s Civil Aviation Directorate for a number of procedures, and its operations will have multiple facets, according to the press statement.

The company has also applied for an Air Training Organisation certificate, under which they will be able to train pilots in Malta, as well as for a Maintenance Training Organisation certificate for training engineers and technicians.

Britten-Norman is weighing the possibility of registering a number of its aircraft in the Malta registry and has recently entered a new three-year agreement for training of the Armed Forces of Malta (AFM) pilots, according to the DOI press statement.

The post Britten-Norman to invest €1m in Malta first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The mother company says it identified failures relating to requirements around key event notifications. Betit will pay £1.4m (€1.6m) and MT SecureTrade £700,000 (€800,000+) to responsible gambling charities pursuant to negotiated regulatory settlements, the press release says. The assessments were carried out in 2017 and 2018.

“Each company acknowledged previous weaknesses in its controls to meet social responsibility requirements early in the Gambling Commission process and immediately took steps to address the gaps in its procedures,” said Robin Reed, CEO of GiG. The CEO also praised the transparency of the process and cooperation with the UK watchdog.

“Commencing from the end of 2017, GiG has embarked on an ambitious journey to place player well-being, prevention of money laundering and sustainable business practices at the core of its operators,” Mr Reed added.

“In the last two years, we have invested heavily in automated technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) enabling early prevention, monitoring and other reporting tools. We have also invested in people, building our compliance and player safety teams and ensuring that the necessary tools are available to them to assist in their duties of reducing the risk of business being used to further financial crime and detecting and interacting with players who may be vulnerable or at risk of problem gambling,” Mr Reed said.

The CEO ensured commitment to forming a “safe environment” for players and to “reduce gambling-related harm”. GiG says it envisages an iGaming market that is “fair and fun for all”.

Gaming Innovation Group Inc has operations in Malta and is dual-listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GIG and on Nasdaq Stockholm under the ticker symbol GIGSEK.

The post GiG subsidiaries to pay fine after UK regulator finds shortcomings first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

The payment operator and prepaid card issuer is also licensed by the United Kingdom’s financial watchdog; the Financial Conduct Authority. This means that PFS will continue to operate as usual throughout the European Economic Area post-Brexit, the company says.

“The future looks even brighter now for PFS with this announcement. It ensures that no matter what happens with regards to Brexit, our business is prepared for all scenarios and there will be no impact to our customers and partners. We look forward to enjoying an excellent working relationship with the Central Bank of Ireland in the years to come,” says Noel Moran, CEO at PFS.

The company operates from the Innovation Hub in Ireland and its Technology Centre in Malta.

The post Irish fintech PFS bags local licence prepping for Brexit first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

Plume’s launch in the United Kingdom comes less than a year after the introduction of Plume membership in the United States, which is a subscription-based service that includes features such as adaptive WiFi, HomePass and parental controls with customisable profiles.

Plume’s platform snowballed in 2018 through large-scale usage by companies such as Comcast, Bell Canada, Liberty Global, and Samsung. At the same time, by open-sourcing Plume’s device software middle layer called OpenSync, the company expanded through partnerships with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Switzerland, Malta, the Cayman Islands, the Netherlands, and now in the UK.

AI solution for better home security

Upon entering the United Kingdom, the company also launched its security offering for US and UK members called Advanced IoT Protection, which is an AI-powered security service designed to protect home IoT devices.

Plume uses AI to identify all devices connected to a home network, detects anomalies in device behaviour, and immediately quarantines devices that have been compromised to prevent a breach from spreading to other devices connected to the home network, the Plume press statement describes. The cloud-solution continually learns patterns of normal device behaviour across a large population of similar devices to spot abnormalities in real time and immediately act to protect users, the company says.

“The ever-increasing demand for smart home performance coupled with the proliferation of IoT devices means connectivity and security are merging and must be addressed jointly and comprehensively,” said Fahri Diner, CEO and co-founder of Plume. “Leveraging our scale as the operator of perhaps the largest software-defined-network in the world, our learnings gathered from a vast population of connected devices uniquely positions Plume to offer the most effective anomaly-based protection of IoT devices.”

The post Plume enters UK market, launches AI security tool first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“Despite the uncertainty around Brexit, we are still optimistic about the crypto market as this could be a new economic opportunity to both the euro and British pound,” said Andy Cheung, Head of Operations of OKEx. The OKEx chief addressed the issue yesterday in London, during an event dubbed “mindxchange”, discussing blockchain progress in the United Kingdom.

Attendants of the event agreed that as the adoption of blockchain technology is broadening in the United Kingdom, and across the world, prompt action is needed to speed up publishing a regulatory framework in place, the press statement says.

“It has always been delightful to see the crypto community growing. The United Kingdom owns one of the fastest-growing crypto communities in the world. Having observed such great potential, we wanted to support the needs here, and therefore, we launched GBP on our C2C platform,” Mr Cheung concluded.

OKEx is a digital asset exchange headquartered in Malta, offering digital assets trading services including token trading, futures trading, perpetual swap trading and index tracker to global traders with blockchain technology. Currently, the exchange offers over 400 token and futures trading pairs enabling users to optimise their strategies. The company says their platform serves “millions of customers from over 200 countries and regions”.

OKEx recently launched the British pound (GBP) and the Thai baht (THB) as two new currencies available for trade on its over-the-counter (OTC) platform, which is often tagged as a fiat-to-cryptocurrency platform. “Thailand and the UK own the fastest-growing crypto communities in the world. We see great potential in these two markets and want to support the needs there,” Mr Chueng said at the time of launching GBP and THB.

The post Maltese DA exchange OKEx believes in UK despite Brexit doubt first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.

“The ball is in the UK’s court after its Parliament voted against the present deal with the EU. It also voted against leaving the EU without a deal. So the current situation means the UK needs to either accept the deal or not exit the EU at all”, the Prime Minister said, according to the press statement.

He said the European Union would not change its position for not to compromise the principles it is built upon. “It is not a case of stubbornness by the EU, but a case of being realistic,” the prime minister said.

PM Muscat explained that there are some challenges for the United Kingdom if given an extension. “Primarily, the EU treaties are clear: the UK will be expected to organise the European Parliament elections in May, even though these will not have any relevance in the long-term. It is also clear that the UK cannot have a veto on an EU budget that it will not be part of.”

The post Malta confirms commitment to support Brexit extension first appeared on The Malta Business Weekly.