Speaker: Mark Abela

A Certified Public Accountant and Auditor (CPA, Pr Aud), Mark has over twenty-five years’ experience in different industry sectors both locally and overseas. Mark holds Bachelor degrees in Commerce (1999) and Accountancy (2001) and a Master’s Degree in Financial Services (2007), all from the University of Malta. After graduating, Mark joined PricewaterhouseCoopers. There he gained the necessary experience to be certified as a Public Accountant and Auditor. Audit clients were diverse and operated in different sectors. After leaving PricewaterhouseCoopers, Mark worked with two other Big 4 firms (EY and Deloitte), where he headed the Financial Accounting Advisory Services and the Technical and Regulatory departments respectively. He worked with the European Financial Reporting and Advisory Group (EFRAG, Brussels), the Malta Institute of Accountants, the Maltese Ministry for Finance, Fenlex and Amber Malta (CSPs), Chevron Group (iGaming consultants on AML/CFT) and is currently employed as Head of AML services with RiskCap International Limited. Mark is a director on the Board of financial services entities and as MLRO for an iGaming entity. Mark extended his skills and competencies by occupying different positions with private, public, and special purpose entities. This notwithstanding, there was always a common underlying factor, that is, Mark’s keen interest in providing advice on technical, legal, and regulatory matters including but not limited to those affecting the accountancy profession. He is one of the leading technical financial reporting experts in Malta (IFRS, GAPSME, GAPEE). This is also the case for insurance, technical (IFRS) and regulatory matters as well as Auditing (ISAs) and Ethics (IESBA). Currently his interest lies in AML/CFT compliance, iGaming and CSPs. Significant achievements for Mark include the transposition of the Accounting Directive, where he was the Secretary of Accountancy Board’s Transposition Working Group and directed the MIA technical activities during the transposition of the Directive that resulted in GAPSME (2010), the first standalone Maltese financial reporting framework for SMEs. Mark is the first and only Maltese person to work with the most important and influential entities in IFRS, EFRAG. He was also the first CEO of the Malta Institute of Accountants. Mark has authored various articles that were featured in local and foreign journals, lectures with several service providers and was a lecturer at the University of Malta.