One System, One Source of Truth: Malta Advances Identity Overhaul for Financial Services

The Malta Financial Services Advisory Council’s (MFSAC) strategy has continued to make significant progress since it was launched in March 2023, representing an overhaul of Malta’s financial services sector.  

The MFSAC strategy is multi-pronged, with workstreams focusing on regulatory and legislative reforms for specific industries along with broader transformational initiatives that will modernise the financial services infrastructure. Malta has taken a decision step forward in this regard, formally awarding the tender for its Centralised Identity Management system, part of the broader Centralised Data Repository (CDR) programme. 

For background, a Centralised Identity Management system is a single shared system where all the key information about a person or business is stored in one place and kept consistent across different government agencies. This includes who they are, their official documents, their registration details. Instead of having to supply the same documents to different entities, a centralised system creates one reliable source of truth that all the relevant agencies can draw from, so information only needs to be verified once, and everyone is working from the same data. 

In light of the utility of a system, MFSAC wasted no time in progressing with setting this up. The contract for building the infrastructure for a centralised system was awarded in March 2025 to a winning consortium, with no appeals submitted, officially launching a project that has long been considered essential to the island's financial services strategy. The CDR is one of several transformational initiatives vital for modernising Malta's financial infrastructure, and its deployment is expected by the fourth quarter of 2026. 

Work is already well under way. Initial system mapping has begun in collaboration with the Malta Business Registry (MBR), with numerous technical and business meetings establishing the system's design parameters. The MBR’s ICT team is working alongside MITA to develop the necessary IT infrastructure, including Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), while dual weekly meetings are driving progress on technical functionalities and regulatory compliance workflows. A comprehensive Project Inception Report is due by the end of August 2025, after which development of the full system will commence. 

The CDR is designed to serve as a single, reliable national data repository, aligning records across key bodies including IdentityMalta, the MBR, and the Commissioner for Revenue. By streamlining due diligence and compliance processes, it aims to reduce duplication, lower costs, and improve consistency for all entities operating in Malta's financial services sector. 

The system will also support the evolution of Malta's eID solution and introduce digital data wallets aligned with EU requirements for secure identity management, enhancing user control over personal data. 

Officials say the initiative will directly address long-standing industry concerns around regulatory complexity, strengthen Malta's international competitiveness, and lay the foundations for further digital innovation across the sector. 

This is the fourth part in our series focused on the MFSAC interim report. Each week, we will be doing a deep dive on a different workstream, and the progress made since MFSAC introduced the Financial Services Strategy in 2023.