Malta Outscores Cyprus on AI Skills, but Trading Firms Still Hire in Cyprus

Malta ranks second of 56 Commonwealth members on youth readiness for artificial intelligence and Cyprus seventh, a new index shows. Online trading firms still post more jobs in Cyprus than anywhere else, an FM Intelligence analysis published today (Thursday) found.

The gap matters to an industry whose job ads increasingly ask for those skills. Of 2,557 open roles at 77 brokers, crypto exchanges and prop firms on October 1, 23% asked for AI skills, up from 19% a quarter earlier, according to consultancy FYI.LTD.

AI has also come up when brokers cut staff. IronFX cut about 150 jobs in March for efficiency amid the AI wave, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC ) register still held 1,966 active licenses on November 5, FM Intelligence's license monitor shows, the fourth-largest of the 10 registers it tracks.

London's trading industry is coming home!

Cyprus Still Tops the Job Ads, by a Thinner Margin

The hiring data cut the other way, though less firmly than a year ago. Cyprus held 22.8% of vacancies at the 50 largest brokers in the first quarter, FinanceMagnates.com reported in February.

On FYI's wider sample, its share was 8.5% in the fourth quarter, down from 11.1% in the third. Its 218 roles still put it ahead of the United States with 190 and Singapore with 182. Malta did not make the top ten.

Several of the island's largest employers posted fewer roles. XM went from 62 Cyprus ads to 47 and Exness from 32 to 18, while Kraken became one of the island's biggest hirers this year.

Groups split the decision in different ways. Equiti opened a technology hub in Bangalore in July, while Deriv in 2024 added a second Cyprus office in Nicosia for AI and data roles.

The headline count also flatters Cyprus. Some 38% of its ads had already run in an earlier quarter, and 25 had been open for six months or more. Counting only fresh ads, the United States comes first, by FM Intelligence's calculation.

Official Statistics Back the Ranking

The Ayre Index, published by the Ayre Think Tank, scores members on seven pillars, from access to technology to the quality of work open to young people. Malta scored 75.0 out of 100 and Cyprus 67.4, with the widest gaps in decent work and digital capability, the analysis found.

The index is a first edition, and an AI model scored its indicators. The European Commission's figures for people aged 16 to 74 point the same way.

In Malta, 66.8% of people have at least basic digital skills, against 55.8% in Cyprus and an EU average of 60.4%. Maltese enterprises use AI at more than twice the Cypriot rate, 21.5% against 9.3%.

Engineer Pay Falls Below the Top Tax Break

FinTop Consulting puts MT5 and cTrader platform engineers in Cyprus at $39,000 to almost $65,000 a year. Most of that range falls short of the salary threshold for the island's largest income tax relief for newcomers.

The full FM Intelligence analysis shows how Cyprus has filled its technology jobs since 2019, how payrolls and income per employee at CySEC-licensed firms moved between 2020 and 2025, and how many staff those firms are likely to employ at the end of 2026.