Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/874823
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2017 Events 42 HSBC Malta hosts event to help customers turn compliance into business advantage HSBC Malta hosted a first-of-its-kind cus- tomer event in Malta focused on financial crime risks and associated compliance ob- ligations, which have increased markedly from the past. A packed hall of business and corporate customers learned about how these changes to the banking landscape are affecting them and the opportunities and risks they present for their companies. The event was opened by the bank's Chief Executive Officer Andrew Beane, who spoke about the importance of achieving inter- national compliance standards to support Malta's long term economic growth and rep- utation in the global economy. He compared modern-day financial crime compliance requirements to airport security, explain- ing that security in the financial system is achieved because everybody needs to com- ply in order to have access. Featuring HSBC's Europe Financial Crime Compliance Head for Commercial Banking Bharati Chandrashekar and Malta-based ARQ Group's Risk and Compliance Partner Dr Manfred Galdes - the business breakfast then examined strategic risks and advantag- es from compliance requirements within the Maltese and global financial systems. A number of topics were covered, including Malta's specific compliance risks, the impact of the various local and global regulations, as well as the role of correspondent banks and their relation to financial crime risk manage- ment of cross-border payments, particularly in the U.S. dollar. According to Dr Manfred Galdes, finan- cial institutions today are coping with new domestic and international risks as a result of which they have to go much deeper into their customer profiles. "The way we look at financial crime risk today has changed mainly because the international standards have changed, the requirement that the Fi- nancial Action Task Force on Money Laun- dering (FATF) has set out for countries and institutions across the globe to comply with are definitely more rigorous than ever be- fore," said Dr Galdes. Worldwide, financial crime is on the rise prompting regulators to enact stricter stand- ards, which in turn have made financial in- stitutions more invasive when processing customer transactions, he said. "We are liv- ing in a very different world to the one we lived in 10 years ago. If we had to compare the type of customers a bank deals with to- day and the regulatory compliance that the bank has to implement today with what used to happen a decade ago, we'd realise that the change is quite dramatic," said Dr Galdes. Malta is expected to be reviewed in 2018 by Moneyval, an independent monitoring body within the Council of Europe that will be evaluating the effectiveness of the country's systems to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Emirates to launch fourth daily service to Sydney, Australia Emirates is set to introduce a fourth daily service from Dubai to Sydney from 25 March 2018, complementing its existing three daily A380 services and improving connections glob- ally. The new service will be oper- ated by Emirates' iconic A380 aircraft and will increase pas- senger capacity on the route by 6,846 seats a week, inbound and outbound between Sydney and Emirates' hub in Dubai, and represents a 7.3% increase in ca- pacity for Emirates' Australian services. The move will provide passen- gers travelling from Europe and North Africa greater connec- tivity to Australia. It also builds on Emirates' partnership with Qantas, meeting continued demand for services to Dubai and complementing Qantas' re- routing of its current Sydney to London service via Singapore (instead of Dubai). Emirates' new service will offer passengers an afternoon departure from Sydney and a convenient arrival in main European cities the following morning. It also introduces a new option for passengers to depart London and main Euro- pean cities in the morning with an afternoon arrival in Sydney the next day with a short con- nection in Dubai. Emirates customers will also be able to enjoy seamless "A380 to A380" connections to 48 des- tinations within Emirates' glob- al network via its hub in Dubai. Earlier this year Emirates announced plans to enhance its Australian services, with a third daily service set to be in- troduced between Dubai and Brisbane from 1 December 2017 and operated by a B777- 200LR. Emirates will also up- gauge its third daily flight be- tween Dubai and Melbourne from a B777-300ER to an A380 from 25 March 2018. This change will ensure all three of Emirates' daily flights to Mel- bourne will be serviced by A380 aircraft. All passengers can enjoy over 2,500 channels on Emirates' award-winning inflight en- tertainment system ice, gour- met food and wine across all classes and generous baggage allowances. Emirates recently improved its onboard connec- tivity with up to 20MB of com- plementary onboard Wi-Fi. Between 25 March and 30 March 2018, the inbound ser- vice EK416 will depart Dubai at 20:40, arriving in Sydney at 17:20 the following day. Due to daylight savings from 31 March 2018, the arrival time changes to 16:30 the following day. Between 26 March to 31 March 2018, the outbound ser- vice EK417 will depart Sydney at 17:05, arriving in Dubai at 00:25 the following day. Due to daylight savings from 1 April, the outbound service EK417 will depart Sydney 16:15, arriv- ing the same time the following day. All services will be oper- ated by an A380 aircraft. The A380 aircraft offers 489 seats in a three-class cabin con- figuration with 14 private suites in First Class, 76 flat-bed seats in Business Class and 399 spa- cious seats in Economy. Emirates currently operates 77 weekly flights from Dubai to Australia, with flights to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide. The third daily service to Brisbane and fourth daily service to Sydney will bring this to 91 weekly flights. Emirates operates daily sched- uled flights between Malta and Dubai via Larnaca, Cyprus, on a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. For more information on Emir- ates visit: www.emirates.com. Get to know your body This year's Science in the City festival, which will be held on 29 September between 6pm and midnight, will include a newly expanded Health Area, featuring research from the University of Malta, various health checks to help you get to know your body, as well as a glimpse into the future of healthcare in the information age. The corner of St John's Street and Republic Street will be domi- nated by a large hologram instal- lation set up by a group of MCAST students, complementing other high tech features elsewhere at the festival. Reflecting the trend that technology and healthcare are becoming more and more in- tertwined, a large part of the holo- gram footage on display has been contributed by researchers at the University of Malta who will be meeting the public along St John's Street to explain their research tackling a wide range of diseases. Other organisations are coming to Science in the City as well, with the Malta Chamber of Pharma- cists focusing on patient centred technology such as smartphone apps for vaccinations alongside research into how the genome can affect people's responses to drugs. The National Alliance for Rare Diseases Support – Malta will have a stand to raise aware- ness of conditions that might get overlooked. The contribution of further re- search groups from the University of Malta will underpin these top- ics with more science. In a stand organised by Prof Alex Felice and Dr Joseph Borg from the Facul- ties of Medicine and Surgery, and Health Science, citizens will be able to find out more about rare blood disorders and be shown how to extract DNA from cells. Visitors can even browse the hu- man genome and identify how changes in DNA can be analysed afterwards and linked to disease. Other participants will bring the more practical side of healthcare to the festival. Based in St John's Street and inside Casino Maltese, different areas of medicine will be covered, showcasing equip- ment from commonplace items we should probably learn more about (such as defibrillators) all the way to some far less familiar specialist appliances that are used in audiology or even podiatry. Did you know that thermal cameras and equipment for pressure map- ping can be used to study your feet? If you spend some time here, you will certainly know your body better than before! Bridging the way between Ca- sino Maltese and St George's Square, a few student organisa- tions will bring even more hands on experiments and games to the area, rounding off an insight into the different facets of healthcare, viewed from many different an- gles. The Science in the City—Euro- pean Researchers' Night festival, is organised by the University of Malta, the Research Trust of the University of Malta and the Malta Chamber of Scientists together with a large number of partners. It is funded by the European Com- mission's Research and Innova- tion Framework Programme Ho- rizon 2020 (H2020, 2014–2020) by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions and recognised as a Fes- tival by Europe for Festivals and Festivals for Europe (EFFE). It is supported by the Ministry for Education and Employment, the Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services, Digital Econo- my and Innovation, and a number of corporate sponsors. The full programme can be viewed on www.scienceinthecity. org.mt or follow us on Facebook for regular updates: www.face- book.com/ScienceInTheCityMal- ta . Kindred hosts Responsible Gaming Conference Kindred Group (previously Unibet Group) is once again arranging the Responsible Gaming Conference together with the Foundation for Social Welfare Services on Malta. The conference will bring togeth- er leading academics, researchers, gaming operators, psychologists, regulators, authorities and treat- ment agencies under one roof to discuss the important topic of re- sponsible gaming. "We are delighted to continue this collaboration with FSWS that started last year, which facilitates an open and important discussion on responsible gaming between the industry, academia and other key stakeholders. Responsible gaming is an area we consider a key building block in our sustaina- ble business strategy and therefore a topic we will continue to drive", says Henrik Tjärnström, Kindred Group CEO. The Conference will be ad- dressed by Silvio Schembri who is Malta's Parliamentary Secre- tary for Financial Affairs, Digital Economy and Innovation within the Office of the Prime Minister and Michael Falzon, the Minister for Social Policy. Other speakers include Henrik Tjärnström (Kin- dred Group CEO), Alfred Grixti (Foundation for Social Welfare Service CEO), the Malta Gaming Authority and the UK Gambling Commission. The conference will also host several key-note speakers includ- ing renowned academics such as Professor Mark Griffiths (Not- tingham Trent University), Dr Jonathan Parke, John Hartson and Justyn Larcombe. For further information, book- ings and livestream link, visit our event-website on www.rgcmalta. com. All proceeds of the confer- ence will go to Agenzija Appogg, a local treatment centre. The event will take place at the InterConti- nental Arena Conference Centre on Malta on Wednesday. The Re- sponsible Gaming Foundation is a proud partner of this year's Re- sponsible Gaming Conference. Manfred Galdes: "Eventually, we should get to a stage where being subjected to stringent due diligence becomes the accepted norm." Participants at last year's Science in the City. Photo credit: Daniel Mifsud