Are you worried about meeting your regulatory responsibilities?

04th August 2020

Wouldn’t it be a relief to go into your regulatory assessments feeling confident that your business is well prepared and in a state of good regulatory health? Through our health checks, this is possible. They allow you and your compliance team the ability to be proactive around your policies, systems and frameworks rather than reactive following regulator feedback or scrutiny.

Regulatory compliance in today’s gambling landscape is an increasingly complex task. This is particularly true if your business is multi-jurisdictional and you have varying compliance requirements to contend with. Without regular maintenance, time and resources, your compliance function will degrade.

The demands from regulators and the risk of enforcement action are also increasing. The penalties for compliance failures are becoming increasingly common and detrimental– not only through financial penalties but also from a reputational standpoint. All of these aspects come together to pose vital questions for any companies involved in the gambling sector in regard to their compliance procedures. Is their compliance framework up to scratch? Could improvements be made? Are they adhering to their licence and regulatory requirements? If not, why not?

In the world of gambling, ignorance is no excuse. Not knowing whether your systems are adequate in the eyes of the regulators puts your company’s future in jeopardy. It is not enough to hold your hands up and say you didn’t know that a problem existed.

It is essential that operators not only have the right policies, procedures and frameworks in place, but that they are implemented and practiced effectively. This is a time-consuming, burdensome and complex task and as a result, operators often do not have the time or resources to undertake it themselves. With all this in mind, we provide regular, ongoing assurance to management teams and Boards within those operators, through the provision of our regulatory health checks.

These health checks will typically focus on one particular risk area at a time. We review an operator’s policies against the regulatory framework and then seek to evidence that the policies have been practiced within the day-to-day actions of wider customer support teams. Subsequent to our review, we will provide a comprehensive report for internal stakeholders and work with operators on any areas considered to be in poor health to create a remediation plan and help implement this to ensure the effectiveness of such changes.

So, a health check is about reassurance as much as it is about insurance. It provides comfort to the business’s internal and external stakeholders and management teams that the business is operating in good health in respect of key regulatory and licence responsibilities. It is about management teams being able to spot potential issues before they grow into real problems. Avoiding mistakes in the first place is as important as putting them right.

As with a regular medical, it is far better to know there are issues and deal with them than avoid facing them at all.