Running from today until 7th of November is Responsible Gambling Week, led by the Industry Group for Responsible Gambling, which is in turn led by industry bodies such as the Remote Gambling Association. This event will see more than 11,000 gambling venues and websites operating in the UK taking part.
The management team here at HooYu has worked with online gambling operators since 2004 to help operators perform KYC and other responsible gambling measures. Back in 2005, when the UK Gambling Act came in, operators were already committed to age verification and other responsible gaming processes. In our experience, trade associations such as the Remote Gambling Association and regulators such as the Gambling Commission have always done a great job of working with operators to communicate and enforce social responsibility measures.
Commitment to responsible gaming is indeed front and centre in the industry. For example, at the end of a gaming advert on TV, viewers are reminded “When the Fun Stops, STOP” or Ray Winstone’s dulcet tones on a Bet365 advert tell us that, “We gamble responsibly on Bet365”.
Anyhow, that’s enough back patting, how can levels of responsible gambling be improved?
Where responsible gaming has slightly fallen down is where differences between jurisdictions’ licensing conditions have led to inconsistent approaches to when and also how stringently age verification or player affordability checks have been implemented. Historically, jurisdictions such as Alderney and the UK have adopted the strictest approach whilst other jurisdictions have set out lower hurdles for their licensees to clear. Surely, it’s time for an industry-wide minimum standard?
The timing of when responsible gambling measures must be implemented also needs improving. Many jurisdictions operate a 72-hour rule whereby player age and identity verification doesn’t have to be completed at registration but within a 72-hour window. This is a weakness, both in terms of enabling minors to use gambling sites and also in terms of fraudsters and financial criminals to engage with operators. Thankfully, new UK licensing conditions regulations are coming in next year to address this gap.
Another area where responsible gambling can be approved is in the level of insight and intelligence built on high volume or VIP players. Many leading operators such as Ladbrokes Coral Group use our KYC and enhanced due diligence tools. Over the past few months we have been working with operators go even further, with their input we have developed a VIP Investigation Report to dig deeper and help operators gain a greater insight into their players and their circumstances.
Our HooYu Investigate platform is a unique data visualisation tool that reveals a player’s world, showing connections to addresses, negative financial indicators, property ownership, company shareholdings, company performance data and company directorships. Many operators now use this tool to support affordability analysis, problem gambling reviews, and source of funds investigations.
At the same time, many operators also use our KYC and on-boarding platform called HooYu Identify which enables operators to verify customer, name, address, date of birth and other data at point of sign-up, deposit or withdrawal.
To find out more about Responsible Gambling Week visit: https://responsiblegamblingweek.org/
To find out more about how operators use our VIP Investigation tools visit https://hooyubusiness.com/vip-report/
To find out more about how operators use KTYC and onboarding tools visit https://hooyubusiness.com/hooyu-identify/age-verification/
Or just drop a line to david.pope@hooyu.com , we would love to hear your thoughts on responsible gaming measures.
