Malta: A Prime Family Office Location for Wealth Advisors
Malta's allure as a family office destination for wealthy global families is shared with wealth managers, private bankers and investment advisors seeking an internationally focused, English speaking family office base for their HNW and ultra-high-net-worth clients.
About the Author
Dr Jean-Philippe Chetcuti is the Managing Partner, Chetcuti Cauchi Advocates, a leading Maltese law firm, and managing director of Andersen Tax in Malta. Previously chairman of STEP in Malta, Dr Chetcuti is a senior private client lawyer specialising in Maltese Citizenship-by-Investment, Family Office Advisory and structuring, international tax, trusts and estate planning. Jean-Philippe has advised some of the world's most accomplished ultra-HNWIs and their family offices, lawyers, private banks, and wealth managers.
Legal and Regulatory Framework for Family Offices & Wealth Management
Within Malta’s path to becoming the leading international family office hub, Malta has been lining up all key points that family office promotors, principals and beneficiaries look for in a destination for their global or regional family office. While transitioning from an offshore centre in the 1990s to a compliant, transparent and self-sustaining financial centre within the European Union, Malta’s legal and regulatory framework for family offices has been carefully crafted and evolved to tick all the boxes for family offices:
- Malta’s full membership of the European Union since 2004 provides a stable and uniform legal and regulatory environment, with access to the European market empowered by the European Union’s freedoms of movement of goods, people, services and capital.
- Malta specifically recognises family-held business units, operating a specialised governmental agency, the Family Business Office, and provides special incentives and tax exemptions to ensure an unhindered next-gen transition of family wealth and family businesses.
- Malta has established a well-defined path for obtaining residency permits for family office principals and staff, ranging from start-up visas, entrepreneur visas, digital nomad visas, permanent residence permits, for high-net-worth individuals and their families
Malta Ranking: Tax Incentives for HNW Families Setting up Single Family Offices
Over the years, Malta has maintained a long-term strategy of compliance, transparency and sustainability, resulting in Malta’s ability to maintain fiscal competitive advantages crafted to comply with international and European Union tax law.
- Malta presents a uniquely efficient corporate tax system for family offices and for family offices vehicles and SPVs having an asset-holding, active trading or services function, including exemptions of qualifying dividend income and capital gains.
- Malta also offers a remittance-based personal tax system for foreign executives of family offices and principals and beneficiaries of family offices. Flat rates of tax may apply to qualifying income. Foreign capital gains are not taxable.
- No wealth taxes or inheritance taxes apply in Malta.
- No estate or inheritance tax, which is a crucial advantage for family offices.
Malta's Regulatory Environment for Family Offices: Recent Competitive Improvements
Malta is a full member of the EU with the additional benefit that, financial services licensed in Malta have passporting rights to the entire European Economic Area (EEA). This enables family offices performing regulated investment services to operate across Europe seamlessly.
Malta provides the complete family office toolkit:
- dedicated family office service companies,
- investment holding vehicles,
- asset holding SPVs,
- private collective investment fund vehicles for family and friends, with light touch Maltese regulation and compliant with European Union law.
- a well-respected Anglo-Saxon trust law tradition codified in the Civil Law style to ensure cross-culture compatibility and user-friendliness of Maltese family trusts, and a foundations legislation.
The Malta Financial Services Authority performs a robust regulatory and supervisory function over authorised professional trust companies in Malta.A light touch regulation applies to private trust companies for family offices who prefer to in-house the trustee function for family trusts.
A light touch regulation applies to private trust companies for family offices who prefer to in-house the trustee function for family trusts.
Malta's Family Office Infrastructure: Banking, Investment, and Legal services
Malta’s homegrown banks have proven very prudent and have withstood the various banking crisis without any major impact on them. Bank of Valletta, HSBC, Lombard Bank, APS Bank, MeDirect and Banif Bank are some of Malta’s home-grown banks. Some have a level of state participation, others are more fintech-oriented, some act as custodians, and they all offer a degree of wealth management services. Malta’s banking system is stable and secure, with banks adhering to strict EU banking directives and high capital adequacy ratios. Banks tend to be conservative, hence their propensity to weather any economic storms.
The island vaunts a respected investment services industry with a number of Maltese investment management firms and stock brokerage firms operating in the sector, some investing heavily in technology and in their investment platform to provide width and breadth of trading and investing options.
The legal profession is well-regarded and operates on an international standard. Lawyers read law at the University of Malta and often experience international exchanges and even specialise further in foreign law schools and universities, typically the UK and Italy. A high number of respected law firms specialize in areas crucial for family offices, including tax law, estate planning, corporate structuring, and compliance with international financial regulations.
The STEP Malta branch is very active in representing the private wealth sector and plays an active role in Malta’s Family Office Strategy.
Malta’s financial infrastructure is reliable, with the MFSA being considered a reliable and proactive regulator and providing firm but reasonable supervision, hence ensuring that banks, investment firms, and legal services maintain the highest standards. The Maltese regulatory framework aligns with EU standards including MiFID II for financial markets and Anti-Money Laundering Directives, ensuring high levels of compliance and transparency.
Malta's Talent Pool for Family Offices and Wealth Management
Malta’s key strengths as a destination for family offices, as in the financial services sector, counts on the availability of a highly skilled, English-speaking but also multi-lingual local workforce and in Malta’s attractiveness to globally sourced specialised talent.
Malta offers a talent pool with well-developed experience serving international private clients and HNWIs, financial services, technology and i-gaming, key sectors in the Maltese economy that have enjoyed steady growth for the past decade. Over the years, Malta has followed a strategy of free-handed investment in education and training, particularly in those sectors having strategic importance for the island: financial services, igaming, blockchain and Web3 technologies, AI, private aviation and the superyacht industry.
The local financial services industry, comprising the law firms, accounting and consulting firms, corporate and trust services providers, produces a talent pool well-versed in company and trust management, compliance, accounting and The local financial services industry, comprising the law firms, consulting firms, corporate and trust services providers, investment and fund firms, produces a talent pool well-versed in company and trust management, compliance, accounting, fund management, and wealth management.
Malta’s legal professionals and notaries are highly skilled in succession planning considerations, a pivotal area for family offices that focus on cross-generational wealth transfer. Local talent is proficient at structuring trusts, foundations, and other vehicles that optimize tax efficiency and provide legal protection for family assets.
Malta Lifestyle & Residency Advantages for Wealth Managers & HNW Families
Malta offers a range of lifestyle and residency advantages beyond the financial benefits mentioned above. Malta’s quality of life and European standard of living, its temperate climate and safe environment, its top-tier educational system and leading-edge healthcare system, all contribute to placing podium when it comes to relocation considerations.
Malta’s rich history, with influences from the Phoenicians, Romans, Moors, and British, offers a unique cultural backdrop. The country presents a vibrant cultural scene, including theatre, music, and art with internationally renowned festivals like the local Carnival and the Malta International Arts Festival being celebrated fervently, offering plenty of opportunities for families to immerse themselves in local culture
Through its diverse Residency and Citizenship Programmes such as the Permanent Residence Program (MPRP) and Citizenship by Naturalization, Malta allows relocators to move within, whilst dedicating distinct levels of residency commitments, and potentially low levels of physical presence. The island is also a multicultural hub. Being placed strategically between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, expats feel a welcoming atmosphere, making integration easier for international families.
Cultural and Social Setting: Malta as a 2nd Home for Global Families setting up Family Offices
Malta’s cultural and social environment aligns well with the values and needs of international families offering a combination of stability, openness, multiculturalism, and family-oriented values, essential for families seeking a new base for both personal and financial reasons.
Malta long history of being a crossroads between different cultures, hence resulted in the island becoming home to a multicultural society with residents from across Europe, North Africa, and beyond, hence rendering integration more seamless.
Whilst Malta is known for its family-oriented culture and its majority of local family-owned businesses, yet its economy is still highly international, with a strong focus on sectors like financial services, fintech, and corporate structuring. This marriage between a shared cultural appreciation for family enterprises and a global mindset ensures that professionals in Malta understand the complexities of cross-border business, global taxation, and multinational investments whilst still focusing on legacy, succession planning, and wealth preservation. All the above characteristics are highly appreciated by family offices seeking to set up and operate within the country.
Tech, Innovation & Cybersecurity Infrastructure for Family Offices
Titles like “Innovation Island”, “Blockchain Island” or “Silicon Valletta” reflect Malta’s post-independence love affair with technology. In the 1990s, Malta piloted the first mobile telephony technology (remember the brick phones?) that eventually evolved in what Vodafone is today. Perhaps Malta is better known reputation as a Hub for iGaming, an industry that same Malta again take first-mover position by legislating to regulate and supervise the gambling, especially online gaming industry. Within the context of the EU this meant gaming companies set up and licensed by the Maltese gaming regulator could ‘passport’ their activities across the then 28 member states of the EU. There was no going back. Malta quickly rose to the fore and become a converging point for several of today’s listed gaming operators, having significant human and operational presence in Malta.
Malta ‘did it again’ in 2017 when it announced to the world first Blockchain and Crypto legislation, addressing for the first time the legal and tax nuances that these disruptive innovations brought to the fore. This saw the establishment of the Malta Digital Innovation Authority (MDIA) to oversee the island’s comprehensive tech-regulatory framework while the MFSA oversaw the financial regulatory framework for token offerings and crypto exchanges. The legislation has since been codified at European Union level in the EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) which draws on the experience of Malta, the Blockchain Island.
In parallel with the fast-growing gaming and crypto sectors, FinTech took off rapidly to serve these two innovative sectors and fill the gap left by traditional banking. Maltese electronic money institutions and online banks extended options to family offices looking for agility, usability, speed and security… as well as access to all asset classes and exchanges, including those perceived as high-risk by traditional banks.
This trailblazing tech and fintech revolution on a previously little-known Mediterranean island, slowly spread in the tech and financial circles, and has attracted the interest of VCs and startups alike, and the cohort of budding innovators and entrepreneurs who packed up to go work from the “Fun Island” of Malta, where so many peers were converging for the action, the big business and the coveted Mediterranean lifestyle.
For family offices, this means it can enjoy the existing state-of-the-art internet connectivity and redundancy, as well as the wealth of local expertise and experience.
In my work with family offices and in Malta’s tech scene, I routinely interact with budding RegTech, FinTech and LegalTech startups using Malta as a test base and as their international platform. These industries flourish in Malta’s financial centre that has strategically positioned itself at the forefront of the robust implementation of the EU’s Anti-Money Laundering Directives following through with effective supervision and enforcement.
Family Offices have chosen Malta for, not in spite of, its focus on compliance. Principals prefer to jurisdictions that are aligned with the standard rather than those who resist standards or drag their feet in implementing them or implement them half-heartedly. For family offices, the Maltese regulators’ alignment with best standards in compliance offers welcome legal certainty and familiarity with expected standards of due diligence.
The MFSA is already on top of DORA, the Digital Operational Resilience Act, an EU regulation designed to enhance the operational resilience of digital systems supporting financial institutions in European markets by focusing on risk management, incident response, and governance. It aims to establish a unified framework for ICT risk management, incident reporting, resilience testing, threat intelligence sharing, and third-party risk management. Our family offices routinely ask us for our firm’s cybersecurity services for family offices, some proactively, others for our help tracing funds lost to hacking incidents.
Malta’s geographical location and international connectivity play a role in its appeal as a base for family offices with global operations
Malta's unique geographical position at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea and its excellent international connectivity have made it an increasingly attractive destination for high-net-worth individuals and family offices seeking a base for their global operations:
Malta's location at the Crossroads of Europe and Africa serves as a strategic bridge between Europe and Africa, providing easy access to key markets and investment opportunities.
Malta’s proximity to major financial centres in Europe and the Middle East, such as London, Paris, Frankfurt, and Dubai, facilitates seamless business transactions and collaboration.
Malta boasts modern and well-connected airports and seaports, offering excellent connectivity to major cities worldwide. The island's robust telecommunications infrastructure ensures reliable and high-speed internet connectivity, essential for global business operations. Malta's time zone position allows for efficient communication and collaboration with businesses across different regions.
These factors combined make Malta an ideal location for family offices seeking a stable, well-connected, and business-friendly environment to manage their global investments and assets.
Private & Public Sector Developments positioning Malta as a Leading Destination for Family Offices
Malta’s financial services regulator MFSA) and professional bodies like STEP’s Malta branch of which my partners and I form part, are currently supporting a taskforce set up to suggest the next improvements to Malta as a destination for Family Offices. Under consideration are a several recommendations of tax and financial incentives to family office players as well as a more light touch regulatory system for existing Private Trust Companies (PTCs) as well as investment functions for Maltese family offices in addition to the existing private funds solutions to increase Malta’s attractiveness for investment vehicles in the single and multi-family office space.