Special Address by Mr Nik Mohamed Din Nik Musa, Director-General of Labuan FSA at The Labuan Annual Industry Dinner 2024
THE LABUAN ANNUAL INDUSTRY DINNER 2024
“Black and Gold Soiree”
Special Address by
Special Address by
Mr Nik Mohamed Din Nik Musa
Director-General of Labuan FSA
8 November 2024
Convention Hall, Financial Park labuan
Director-General of Labuan FSA
8 November 2024
Convention Hall, Financial Park labuan
Yang Berbahagia Dato' Wan Mohd Fadzmi Che Wan Othman Fadzilah, Chairman of Labuan FSA,
Authority Members of Labuan FSA,
Yg berusaha Dr. Ken Lim, Chairman Labuan Investment Bank Association,
Yang Berbahagia Dato’ Iskandar Mohd Nuli, Exec. Chairman LIBFC Inc.,
Respected Chairmen of Labuan Associations, Captains of the industry,
Dato’-Dato’, distinguished guests, Members of the media,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh and a very good evening.
1. I am honoured to be here to deliver the special address at this highly anticipated event of the year for Labuan IBFC. First and foremost, I wish to thank and congratulate this year’s organiser – the Labuan Investment Banks Association (LIBA) – for organising the Labuan Industry Annual Dinner 2024. Your efforts in making this evening special are truly commendable. It’s a night of celebration and enjoy among ourselves and our guests after a year of hardwork and dedication. This year, we are indeed very honoured to have Yang Berbahagia Dato’ Wan Mohd Fadzmi and two Authority Members of Labuan FSA, to share this evening with us, together with two members, Yang Berbahagia Datuk Hisham Rusli, Inland Revenue Board and Yang Berusaha Mr. John Patrick Antonysamy, Ministry of Finance. They’re shown their unwavering commitment to be with us today and enjoy the evening. So please do not rush to meet our IRB and MOF reps asking to expedite your waiver application or some exemption requested! Let’s show our guests that Labuan IBFC is not all work but also we do know how to chill, be different and have some fun!
2. And be different here I mean we strive to be one of a kind, distinguished from others and of course, innovative in the things we do. So for this year’s annual dinner, we are introducing… drum roll…an awards night the first to be held in conjunction with the annual dinner. The awards are created, promoted and facilitated by Labuan FSA for the first time to honour and recognise the players who have worked hard and did some out of the box thinking, significantly impacting and placing Labuan on the global map with their innovative products and financial solutions. These innovations were designed to either resolve a particular problem or invent or leverage on the latest technology to gain a competitive advantage for itself and Labuan.
Authority Members of Labuan FSA,
Yg berusaha Dr. Ken Lim, Chairman Labuan Investment Bank Association,
Yang Berbahagia Dato’ Iskandar Mohd Nuli, Exec. Chairman LIBFC Inc.,
Respected Chairmen of Labuan Associations, Captains of the industry,
Dato’-Dato’, distinguished guests, Members of the media,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Assalamualaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh and a very good evening.
1. I am honoured to be here to deliver the special address at this highly anticipated event of the year for Labuan IBFC. First and foremost, I wish to thank and congratulate this year’s organiser – the Labuan Investment Banks Association (LIBA) – for organising the Labuan Industry Annual Dinner 2024. Your efforts in making this evening special are truly commendable. It’s a night of celebration and enjoy among ourselves and our guests after a year of hardwork and dedication. This year, we are indeed very honoured to have Yang Berbahagia Dato’ Wan Mohd Fadzmi and two Authority Members of Labuan FSA, to share this evening with us, together with two members, Yang Berbahagia Datuk Hisham Rusli, Inland Revenue Board and Yang Berusaha Mr. John Patrick Antonysamy, Ministry of Finance. They’re shown their unwavering commitment to be with us today and enjoy the evening. So please do not rush to meet our IRB and MOF reps asking to expedite your waiver application or some exemption requested! Let’s show our guests that Labuan IBFC is not all work but also we do know how to chill, be different and have some fun!
2. And be different here I mean we strive to be one of a kind, distinguished from others and of course, innovative in the things we do. So for this year’s annual dinner, we are introducing… drum roll…an awards night the first to be held in conjunction with the annual dinner. The awards are created, promoted and facilitated by Labuan FSA for the first time to honour and recognise the players who have worked hard and did some out of the box thinking, significantly impacting and placing Labuan on the global map with their innovative products and financial solutions. These innovations were designed to either resolve a particular problem or invent or leverage on the latest technology to gain a competitive advantage for itself and Labuan.
3. The objectives of having an awards night in conjunction with the annual dinner are to firstly, celebrate the selected winners, secondly, to build a culture of innovation in our industry in whatever we do--be it from business operations to product solutions, and thirdly, as a way of gratitude for their pioneering efforts, in particular, in spearheading the aspirations of the 5-year Labuan IBFC Strategic Roadmap 2022-2026. We also wanted to design the awards night to be memorable and the award itself to be prestigious and sought after. So one of the ways to ensure that the awards exude a sense of prestige and honour is to open the submission to all players to participate, and engage a panel of judges who are knowledgable, professional, independent and respected who will assess the submission through a robust criteria filtered for soundness. There is no submission fee nor the need to buy a table--all these are fully sponsored by the Authority to ensure unbiasedness, nor would we intervene in the assessment process. Even I myself do not know who the winners are (…told the organiser no leaks)! So I’m happy to share together with you the suspense and at the same time, open to ideas in future ways to improve this awards which we have branded as LIFIA or Labuan IBFC Industry Awards.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
4. We hope that the three awards recognition will go a long way towards placing Labuan more prominently on the global map, in line with the 5-year Roadmap. The first award is for excellence in digital financial services. As the Authority, we launched the Shariah blockchain masterplan in May 2024 as the enabler for the infrastructure to be in place. This is to further support the existing 109 digital financial services players including digital banks, insurtech, e-payment, digital exchanges and credit tokens. The i-Box sandbox to attract fintech and Islamic finance practitioners is expected to see new Islamic digital banks next year to support the digital business market. We hope to see the existing digital players and blockchain firms to continue to reshape the industry with advances in Artificial Intelligence and Fintech for predictive analytics, personalised investment strategies and enhanced risk management—aimed to be a developed digital financial hub.
5. The second award is excellence in captive insurance and takaful. We are targeting to become Asia’s leading hub for captives. There is growing interest and awareness in Asia on the benefits of captives set-up to be within the control of their own corporate groups and we are now ranked second in Asia in terms of number of captives set-up at around 100, Labuan IBFC has received numerous recognition from the European Captives Awards Review and Asian Captives Review for a number of years for captives owing to the modern regulations we have and innovative structures the Centre offers. It is further boosted by the recent Budget 2025 announcement that digital-based takaful and takaful-related business activities will enjoy 0% tax for the next four years. This is also expected to benefit the interests that are coming from domestic entities to reap captive’s benefits such as cost savings and heightened risk management as captives are not available in the onshore market. To capitalise on the new tax incentive, Labuan FSA will develop guidance notes on digital takakful captives, a unique proposition by any financial centre around the world.
6. The third and final award is excellence in Islamic finance. We launched the Islamic Digital Asset Centre or IDAC initiative in 2022 to spearhead Labuan’s position as an Islamic finance hub. IDAC is a 3-pillar initiative that is designed to, firstly, promote the Islamic capital market where digital exchanges have been set up as a funding and investment platform via the issuance, listing and trading of asset-backed tokens called RAMZ using real world assets. Already the listing on these exchanges will hit the USD1 billion mark by year-end, by no means a small feat being the first in the world to pave the way. Secondly, is the development of digital banks, takaful and financial players to bring liquidity and business solutions to the Islamic financial market, and thirdly, the development of Islamic social finance to provide an array of Islamic social finance products and services to the unserved and underserved market including the expatriates and foreign workers. Indeed, these developments signal that the slow down brought about the post-pandamic is behind us as we look more positively into the future that looks more at sustainability and inclusivity.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
5. The second award is excellence in captive insurance and takaful. We are targeting to become Asia’s leading hub for captives. There is growing interest and awareness in Asia on the benefits of captives set-up to be within the control of their own corporate groups and we are now ranked second in Asia in terms of number of captives set-up at around 100, Labuan IBFC has received numerous recognition from the European Captives Awards Review and Asian Captives Review for a number of years for captives owing to the modern regulations we have and innovative structures the Centre offers. It is further boosted by the recent Budget 2025 announcement that digital-based takaful and takaful-related business activities will enjoy 0% tax for the next four years. This is also expected to benefit the interests that are coming from domestic entities to reap captive’s benefits such as cost savings and heightened risk management as captives are not available in the onshore market. To capitalise on the new tax incentive, Labuan FSA will develop guidance notes on digital takakful captives, a unique proposition by any financial centre around the world.
6. The third and final award is excellence in Islamic finance. We launched the Islamic Digital Asset Centre or IDAC initiative in 2022 to spearhead Labuan’s position as an Islamic finance hub. IDAC is a 3-pillar initiative that is designed to, firstly, promote the Islamic capital market where digital exchanges have been set up as a funding and investment platform via the issuance, listing and trading of asset-backed tokens called RAMZ using real world assets. Already the listing on these exchanges will hit the USD1 billion mark by year-end, by no means a small feat being the first in the world to pave the way. Secondly, is the development of digital banks, takaful and financial players to bring liquidity and business solutions to the Islamic financial market, and thirdly, the development of Islamic social finance to provide an array of Islamic social finance products and services to the unserved and underserved market including the expatriates and foreign workers. Indeed, these developments signal that the slow down brought about the post-pandamic is behind us as we look more positively into the future that looks more at sustainability and inclusivity.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
7. I’d better stop here to not be in between you and a sumptuous dinner. In all earnesty, we will soon witness the awards ceremony as well as the revelation of the winners of the three awards in this wonderful and enchanting atmosphere of our Black and Gold Soiree (Swa-rei) – a night dedicated to celebrating the journey, the achievements, and the promising future ahead! We will do this after we are served with some food as a hungry crowd can be an angry crowd. I wish to extend my congratulations to the winners for their outstanding contributions in driving innovation in the Labuan IBFC. As leaders, you serve as role models for aspiring finance professionals and will be expected to be the vanguard of the industry’s continued development and growth as champions of the Labuan finance industry.
8. On this note as well, I would also like to take this opportunity to record my appreciation to the three independent judges of the awards namely, Yang Berbahagia Datuk Professor Dr. Mohamed Akram Laldin from INCEIF, Malaysia, Mr. Anil Kumar Puri, International Tax Transaction and Services partner of Ernst & Young Malaysia and Ms. Julie Ng, Chief Executive Officer of RAM Rating Services Berhad.
9. In the same spirit of excellence, I am honoured to announce the launch of the Labuan Investment Bank Association (LIBA), which will be done shortly after this speech. LIBA will mark a new chapter for the Labuan IBFC industry, in fostering innovation and reinforcing collaboration across the industry to drive excellence, and in strengthening the standing of Labuan IBFC in the global scale.
10. Once again, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all our stakeholders, partners and the industry for your unwavering support and trust in Labuan IBFC.
8. On this note as well, I would also like to take this opportunity to record my appreciation to the three independent judges of the awards namely, Yang Berbahagia Datuk Professor Dr. Mohamed Akram Laldin from INCEIF, Malaysia, Mr. Anil Kumar Puri, International Tax Transaction and Services partner of Ernst & Young Malaysia and Ms. Julie Ng, Chief Executive Officer of RAM Rating Services Berhad.
9. In the same spirit of excellence, I am honoured to announce the launch of the Labuan Investment Bank Association (LIBA), which will be done shortly after this speech. LIBA will mark a new chapter for the Labuan IBFC industry, in fostering innovation and reinforcing collaboration across the industry to drive excellence, and in strengthening the standing of Labuan IBFC in the global scale.
10. Once again, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all our stakeholders, partners and the industry for your unwavering support and trust in Labuan IBFC.
Thank you and enjoy the rest of the evening.
Mr Nik Mohamed Din Nik Musa
Director-General, Labuan FSA
