‘The moment you stop learning, you stop being able to lead effectively’ – MeDirect CEO

Since taking the helm of the retail and corporate digital bank MeDirect in February 2025, CEO Jean-Claude Maher has steered the systemic institution through an acquisition by Banka CREDITAS and positioned it to further embrace innovation, bolster its robustness and strengthen its foundations for increased growth and longevity.

“I think I can call myself an old dog of the banking industry,” laughs Jean-Claude Maher, CEO of the retail and corporate digital bank, MeDirect. Indeed, his decades of hard graft in the international banking sector have seen him work across geographies and roles.

Jean-Claude, “the product of a French father and a German mother”, and an economist by education, spent 29 years at banking behemoth Deutsche Bank and joined MeDirect in 2023 before moving to Malta to take the helm of the MeDirect Group in February of last year. He describes the role as a chance to “make things happen”, noting that the company’s relatively small size belies its potential. “This is a high-impact organisation, and that motivates me,” he attests, since any new development quickly impacts clients, staff and the regulatory framework the systemic bank is operating in. His dedication is such that, as a married father of two, finding time to explore more of the island has proved difficult.

Building on this dedication, the CEO has come to the islands keen to introduce new products and strategic directions for MeDirect. He maintains his edge by engaging with people directly, listening to their perspectives and adapting the organisation to meet real, on-the-ground needs. “Ivory-tower thinking is important when devising new ideas, but when it comes to launching new initiatives, you have to engage with others all the time. It’s the only way to avoid losing your ‘feel’ for the real implications of your ideas. It’s essential to constantly draw on the collective wisdom gathered from customers, employees and the wider community, and nurture that knowledge to stay up to speed with changes in the market,” he states.

Jean-Claude credits the increasingly fast pace of the banking industry for keeping his approach grounded. “Engaging in a CEO role for a group that is a systemic banking institution adds to the complexity that inevitably comes with managing more interdependencies between multiple variables on a day-to-day basis. These are still the early days of my leadership, and it is up to others to judge, but I have dealt with complexity all my life and I find the ability to learn extremely nurturing. The moment you stop learning is the moment you stop being able to lead effectively,” he asserts.

This perspective has no doubt been crucial during the tail-end of MeDirect’s recent acquisition by the Czech bank Banka CREDITAS – an 18-month process that was completed and approved by the European Central Bank in August 2025. Indeed, last year was marked by both opportunities and challenges arising from the history and strategy of MeDirect, as well as its leadership’s aspirations for the future.

“The group had reinvented itself, if I may put it that way, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis. Pre-pandemic, our business model was primarily geared towards providing international leveraged corporate finance. Since then, management has done an excellent job in steering the transformation of MeDirect into a fully-fledged digital retail and corporate bank of renown. It’s been an impressive turnaround, but we also realised that we needed a partner who could help us really exploit the potential of the platform we have built,” Jean-Claude explains.

The acquisition by Banka CREDITAS “is injecting fresh capital into the company; putting fuel into the engine, so to speak. They’ve come on board as a committed shareholder, sharing our DNA and our appetite for challenging the larger, more established players within the banking sector. Having a shareholder who has deep knowledge of running a challenger bank in its own markets creates a level of understanding and the powerful synergies we were looking for. In the short term, this acquisition does not imply any change in our operations or strategy, but we are now set for growth. We now have the capacity, and in 2026 we’ll see the first translation of that into our financial figures,” the CEO asserts.

Concomitant with the acquisition, MeDirect continued to further refine its business model, completing the exit from its legacy international leveraged corporate finance business. On top of that, MeDirect has further bolstered the robustness of its technology stack. “Robustness is vital for our organisation to ensure our technology stack (running the front and backend of the bank’s offering) is future-proof and capable of supporting incoming growth. In other words, we not only want our systems to be available 24/7, but, specifically, to be secure. My personal view is that our infrastructure is among the most secure and agile in Malta. We have a robust, highly advanced platform achieving industry-leading uptime. Being able to boast of such a platform is no accident but the result of continuous investment and nurturing. It’s clear that we are positioning ourselves as innovators who are completely committed to using technology to provide the best possible experience to our customers,” Jean-Claude explains.

“Our technology stack gives us a real edge over our competitors. Its inherent agility means we can bring products to market at a much faster pace. Our open architecture also enables us to offer our clients the best investment opportunities from the world’s leading fund managers and markets with ease,” adds Jean-Claude.

“Thanks to our platform, MeDirect can source the best products available on the market and make them available to Maltese investors, bringing choice and quality without the need to reinvent the wheel. The culture of seeking the best options for customers is also reflected in MeDirect’s approach to other partnerships, including a new collaboration with MAPFRE MSV Life as a tied intermediary.

“Through our dedicated Corporate Services platform, that we continuously enrich with features geared towards the specific needs of Corporate Treasurers and Finance Directors, and the further development of our lending offering, we are also providing a cutting-edge service to Maltese corporates. This is further evidence of MeDirect’s commitment to Malta and its economy. From a customer experience perspective, MeDirect is therefore perfectly placed to offer customers a broad and diversified selection of investment, personal and corporate banking products and services,” says Jean-Claude.

Looking ahead, he sees the potential for this platform to make the most of the next wave of innovation in the banking sector and the broader financial industry. “If we look back at the opportunities which opened up with the development of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), which in just 10 years have transformed the investment landscape, we can imagine that the same might happen with digital assets and the associated investment products that are being developed. We believe that MeDirect has a clear advantage when compared to traditional banking institutions in already having the technology platform in place to make these products available as soon as the time is right,” he explains.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is another key topic for Jean-Claude. AI is revolutionising the banking landscape although the MeDirect Group CEO is keen to emphasise that the bank is very aware of the risks that stem from this technology. “We are using AI as a strategic partner within our technology roadmap, with a clear AI strategy that is now coming to life in both our customer-facing solutions and internal operations. For example, AI capabilities are being embedded into products such as MeManaged, and are supporting our day-to-day activities, including assisted code reviews and other agentic workflows that are currently being explored.

“Given our role in banking and financial services, we’re introducing AI in a careful and controlled way. We focus on appropriate use cases, protect customer and bank data, and ensure there is always human oversight in how AI is applied, both in our products and in our internal tools,” he states.

Jean-Claude shares what inspires him as MeDirect prepares for its journey in 2026. “The future of the bank excites me. With the newly invested capital from Banka CREDITAS, coupled with the excellent platform the bank has created for retail and corporate customers, I know we are very well-positioned for success. Given we have all the ingredients to hand, the goal is for MeDirect to be recognised as a banking group that is in Malta to serve, to stay and to strive,” he affirms.

This article is part of the serialisation of 50 interviews featured in MaltaCEOs 2026 – the sister brand to MaltaCEOs.mt and an annual high-end publication bringing together some of the country’s most influential business leaders.