Starting from scratch with compliance

In today’s ever shifting regulatory-led world, online casinos and sports betting companies are subject to a flurry of legislation and regulations which change on an almost daily basis. The compliance-led mentality of regulators can sometimes lead to operators failing to understand how their products link in to regulatory regimes, causing many to be censured by authorities in high-profile cases.

But what if you could avoid all that by instilling a compliance-led ethos throughout your online platform? By starting from this perspective, operators may be able to stop themselves from getting penalised publicly, help vulnerable customers, and save reputations and revenues alike.

Below, EGR Compliance speaks to one company, Omnia Casino, which is taking such an approach.

EGR Compliance: What was your primary motivation in launching a compliance-led online casino?

Sam Hobcraft (SH): There are many operators doing some good work in this space, but for me, it’s about setting out from the beginning with that mindset. A lot of bigger companies take this seriously, but I don’t think its necessarily prevalent throughout the company and every individual because it has changed so much from when the business may have started. For me, everyone being of the same compliance mindset from the beginning is where the point of difference and our competitive advantage comes from. It’s about building long-term relationships with our customers building a trust with them.

There are UKGC and MGA regulations that we must follow, but it is about that other 20-30% of compliance related actions which are the point of difference. You can follow the letter of the law and interpret that, but you must also think about intelligent ways to make that fun and engaging. It doesn’t always have to be the harder aspects of regulatory compliance.

EGR Compliance: How does this play out?

SH: When we were choosing a white-label partner, we had several items that we were looking for; they’ve got to have good technology and the right level of games, but obviously compliance is also high on that list. Our partner IGC is a very compliant operator and B2B platform, and it interprets things in such a way as to build that trust. The point of difference for Omnia is about the mindset and about making sure everyone realises this is the right approach, even feeding down into the interviews we have with our staff.

We’ve built the technology and a middleware layer that allows us to be very agile, so we are not totally reliant on what IGC does. We can be agile in adding new content, releasing features, and so on, when those need to be released, rather than waiting for IGC’s release cycle.

That allows us to react quickly to the changing environment compared to some of the larger, more established operators which often experience long delays in rolling out new features and content, whereas we can do it in a few days. The more complicated the regulations get the more it plays into our hands allowing us to be better than others.

EGR Compliance: What part does responsible gambling play in your operation?

SH: Responsible gambling is about having transparent offers, clear terms and conditions, having clarity about our points-based system, how many points customers receive, where they are accrued and what they can access with those points. It’s also about being not too ‘shouty’, keeping it simple, no hard sell, keeping our tone and language at an appropriate level (i.e. no exclamation marks) – a tone of voice that is subtle can be refreshing in an environment where customers are often shouted at with a barrage of welcome bonuses and offers.

We work very closely with IGC to make sure we go above and beyond their responsible gambling criteria and we send emails to people at risk. In addition, we try to reduce the friction for customers in getting their KYC documentation in, allowing them to simply upload their documents in our mobile apps, creating an experience which is as easy as possible for our customers.

Omnia has compliance call to actions requiring players to set reality checks before they enter any game and how frequently the consumer wants a reality check to pop up.  We’ve integrated GAMSTOP, designed a totally mobile led casino, created a responsible gambling area and we’ve made our customer withdrawal area easy to access with no blocks. We want customers to engage with the platform, set limits and going forward we are instituting plans to make customers place deposit limits on registration.

EGR Compliance: In your opinion, what’s the most important part of setting up a compliance-centric online casino platform?

SH: It’s about building the right foundation, having the right platform, be that a white-label platform or one which you develop yourself. It’s about the mind-set and about being able to react quickly to changes. It’s about trying to think about compliance in the same way as you would, say marketing or promotions, and putting the effort into being better than everyone else. It’s not about blindly following the rules, it’s about using the rules and regulations to create a point of difference with your online casino offering.

EGR Compliance: Is Omnia Casino completely AI-led or is there some human oversight? How does this work?

SH: Omnia is working towards that goal. Most companies which work with AI will start by setting parameters in a self-learning algorithm – you set a start point and an end point and it works out the best way to get there. At the beginning there is a huge amount of oversight in so much as training the algorithm, improving it, etc. Then after six to 12 months the algorithm becomes better than a human CRM manager in almost all aspects including spotting problem gamblers and behavior. After this time there is still an element of human oversight, but these are in the setting of revised parameters for the program to follow, for example giving bonuses to specific groups and things like that.

In using AI in responsible gambling there is an alerting mechanism and parameters which enable you to detect someone with problem gambling issues early. With these programs you want to get the program to the point where it is largely working by itself, but it is certainly more accurate than humans in spotting problems and trends in consumer behaviour.

EGR Compliance: How has the regulated online casino market changed since you first entered it?

SH: For me it’s become a lot more complicated, when I first started out people could largely do what they want, not always in a good way and there were a lot of online gaming businesses who were abusing certain things.

Increased regulation is a positive step forward, it obviously makes running an online gaming business more complicated and increased regulation makes it harder for people who have not got that industry experience to start gaming businesses because you need a great depth of knowledge in that area. It’s made it more of a challenging environment to work in, but I think a lot of the regulations that have come in are positive for operators and customers.

EGR Compliance: With regulations concerning online casinos becoming tougher all over the world, do you believe that we will see more compliance-centric online casinos in the future?

SH: Definitely, if egaming businesses want to continue to work in established markets and to expand into markets that is where the opportunities are and where we have a competitive advantage for us. Greater regulation will weed out the people who are doing wrong and allow the people who are doing what is right to prosper. For me in the future if want to work in a lot of different markets you won’t unless you are and remain compliant, and it takes a lot of work to do so.

For us we are trying to get to that point by being compliant from the outset, because it is harder to become compliant as an established company and force regulatory changes through an existing company framework rather than starting from the beginning with a compliance related mind-set. It’s going to become tougher to operate compliantly for a lot of companies but it’s the right way to proceed from a customer perspective in creating trust and building out a new brand like Omnia Casino.