The need for Proactive Regulators
Financial regulators need to improve how they handle topics raised by the general public against institutions they are expected to regulate. Their role shouldn’t be seen as simply transposing documents from the EU inbox to the Maltese outbox. As a regulator they need to be able to take a harsh stance against those institutions that abuse their dominant position in the market and need to take a proactive stance when the general public raises the alert of a wrong-doing. Fines need to be imposed on those organisations that break the rules. And all throughout the investigative process the public in general and the impacted stakeholders in particular need to be made aware that their case is still being worked upon and has not fallen into some crevice. When cases are concluded it should be made clear what the outcome is and what remediative action has been decided. Take the case of Bank of Valletta plc (BoV). This institution decided, after a few posts on social media pl...