Industry Forum minutes for 25 July 2024

Minutes of the meeting of the Industry Forum, 25 July 2024.

Location: Remote, via Microsoft Teams.

Members:

• Nick Rust (Chair)
• Tony Boulton
• Kirsty Caldwell
• Charles Cohen
• Ashley Padgett
• Nigel Roddis
• Leo Walker
• Helen Walton.

In attendance:

• REDACTED
• David Rossington (Gambling Commission Commissioner)
• REDACTED.

Apologies:

• Mark Pearson
• David Williams.

1. Welcome, apologies and declarations of interest

No new declarations of interest.

2. Minutes of previous meeting

Amendments to be made to minutes from June.

3. Item 1: Gambling Commission Compliance overview

An overview was provided on the wide variety of work that the compliance team undertakes, aside from just assessments, such as regulatory returns and working with test houses. Some of the bigger projects the team are currently working on were covered, including:

• current work on Suicide reporting and follow ups with the enforcement team
• the raising standards projects
• September's operator event.

Engagement project

Currently, most large operators have Gambling Commission (GC) account managers. A workshop will take place to further explore the implementation of a ‘helpline’ that would be available for smaller operators, to enable them to contact the GC for matters such as enquiries for clearer guidance, for example. The pilot of this work started 3 months ago and there are now approximately 100 operators involved who have been provided with dedicated points of contact with a phone line and email address. The GC is looking at resource requirements for expanding this project: it is likely to sit with the licensing team who will manage some policy and compliance enquiries. It will help the GC further understand the type of queries that can be expected and what staffing resource will be needed.

Industry Forum members gave their feedback and views

Suicide reporting has increased pressure on resources for some operators recently. It would be helpful for the GC to review the reporting services – giving a report upfront would help to avoid duplication while also improving efficiency for the GC.

On targeted, proactive workshops: a desire to see more operators involved, and in pilot schemes there needs to be more consistency with invites to both smaller operators and bigger operators. It is positive that the GC is looking to engage with a mix of smaller and tier 1 operators. Members commented that consultants should also be invited to proactive events to help support collaboration between operators and trade bodies.

Expectations on the interim voluntary code are not clear from the GC which is causing confusion within the industry, such as, expectations of operators relating to Paragraph 3.4.3 of the voluntary code and evaluating customer interactions the impact on operators means increasing operational resources significantly. The effect of this can be felt disproportionately for smaller operators who have fewer employees. There is a desire for more collaboration with GC on how to approach this. REDACTED responded that this is on the agenda for September’s event with operators.

Operators would like to see consistency in how the GC’s risk matrix is used and would like to learn more about the process, including how operators can provide information on areas that are significant to the risk matrix. Further collaboration between operators and the GC will support the GC and help identify high risks within gambling businesses.

Changes to assessments are positive but there is still an issue with consistency such as, the outcomes of assessments, particularly with smaller operators – there is a perception that they are being ‘let off’ with higher risks than some of the bigger operators. Members questioned whether GC consider the impact on high risk factors when it comes to operator size and the number of customers.

GC executive explained that there are formal governance processes that triage non-compliant operators to escalation and consideration for casework – this is a robust GC process.

It was noted some rare cases where special measures may be used for smaller operators, such as where there is an opportunity to educate or inform them in the escalation process. The GC can then make risk assessments in between bands – where there is a higher risk attributed to gross gambling yield (GGY) this may mean more assessments.

There is a perception that there is less communication with smaller operators once special measures have taken place: such as, changes may have been made in the organisation and the GC have not responded or communicated effectively to provide feedback on these changes.

A difficulty with feedback that is not guidance is action taken on feedback is not reliable if it is not considered guidance. Link was made to strategic objectives and clarity on its guidance.

One member noted the pilot of dedicated points of contact for smaller operators is such a positive that it’s surprising the GC hasn’t made more noise about its’ existence.

Members highlighted that when regulatory returns move to a quarterly frequency, this will have a significant impact on operations for smaller operators. It was recommended that a grace period for operators to deal with this transition be granted from GC.

Positive feedback was given regarding the change in tone of approach to assessments, which now feel less adversarial. This helps to improve industry perception of GC.

Members emphasised how industry welcome positive praise from GC on good practice. It is useful for operators to see where they are doing well and members note that they are starting to see this during some assessments, which did not previously happen.

There is a willingness for industry to collaborate with GC and move forward together – this should be considered a positive opportunity for GC to increase collaboration with industry.

Members reiterated that what the GC CEO is saying needs to be carried out from compliance staff.

4. Item 2: Fair and Open (F&O), License Conditions and Codes of Practice (LCCP) stocktake

GC colleagues introduced the topic and asked members how GC can communicate more clearly, ensuring compliance is communicated as early as possible. They reminded members that:

• GC use the LCCP internally on a daily basis to inform work we do
• feedback on the LCCP has been received from other sources; some of the issues raised are easy fixes such as hyperlinks
• other feedback takes longer and might involve consultations.

Feedback from members on LCCP

Please can the GC retain the PDF version of the LCCP as the website is not very efficient at the moment, such as the search function requires improvement.

More clarity required when changes are made, such as who in an operator needs to hold a personal management licence (PML) under new requirements coming in November.

A webinar or blog would be helpful when legislative changes are being made to communicate changes clearly.

The LCCP needs to be restructured on the website to include more cross references. Maybe a thematic version would be helpful so all references to such as, age verification or anti money laundering (AML) are in one place rather than different areas. Currently some operators provide internal training on how to find different topics.

Operators would find it helpful if GC explained more clearly the difference between what’s the standard, what’s the guidance and what’s the ‘must’.

Extract documents are useful but there is no search function which would be helpful.

Members highlighted that ‘all reasonable steps’ is used 25 times but there is no legal definition of this. Is there an opportunity for GC to clarify some of the terminology being used.

An interactive frequently asked questions (FAQ) and/or knowledge base would be helpful or a forum and/or community page.

Having the licensing objectives at the top of the main GC website page would be helpful as they are referred to in all enforcement cases.

Remote gambling and software technical standards (RTS) section and advice from the GC: Forum members gave feedback that the GC could provide examples of poor, ok and good practice to help improve operator’s understanding. This stems from instances when operators seek guidance from the GC, who often refer them to the LCCP instead of providing what they see as clear answers. Providing a few worked examples would therefore be helpful to operators, but without the GC over-committing themselves.

Fair and Open (F&O)

GC colleagues explained they are doing a strategic assessment of the F&O licensing objective to help prioritise future work for GC.

Account withdrawals is a complicated area that touches on all 3 objectives, but the GC don’t have a universal picture of it. This area requires further work to reduce withdrawal delays and develop consistency between operators on decision making.

Members are happy to see this is a focus and provided their feedback.

Acknowledgement of cases where consumers are asked for more identification documents but they are not told why clearly enough. More transparency in these circumstances could help to improve communication and trust between operators and consumers.

Andrew Rhodes’ blog on withdrawal delays was very helpful and addressed topics discussed in previous forum meetings. Members discussed the model for minimising friction at point of account registration and the question whether further checks should be mandated at this stage.

For most operators there are multiple different checks taking place for newly opened accounts (example given was 17), and this information is used to create a risk profile and/or scoring. It was highlighted that it is difficult to gather enough information to make decisions on every single customer too early on in their journey before their playing behaviour is clearer. There will always be a need for further checks later if customer behaviour raises concerns on such as, AML.

Members noted that completing multiple checks on account opening is not necessarily consistent across all operators. One reason for this is the potential for it to be too costly or burdensome for some smaller operators who would not have the financial resources to fund it.

There will always be complaints on withdrawals from the consumers who are practising fraud. Often in ‘big win verifications’ operators are looking for fraud. Other times they may be looking for an IT malfunction. GC colleagues questioned whether a malfunction that has been unidentified for a while is to the detriment of the consumer, but members clarified that Return to Player (RTP) is audited and monitored consistently. It’s the big wins at odd times that trigger checks (one example given of fraudulent behaviour operating at odd times overnight).

American operators use delayed processes, in fact, winning over a certain amount creates a suspension of the account for tax forms to be completed.

Language and terminology for reasons given to consumers as to why an account is being monitored more closely needs to be communicated more clearly by some operators. There are opportunities for ‘best practices’ to be shared but there needs to be more work around public terms and conditions to help legitimate operators.

More work needs to be done around advertising of gambling for example at bus shelters and what is allowed to be advertised in these places, such as ‘the best offer’, or “your bus is a casino”. This highlights a disconnect between F&O within the LCCP and what is advertised.

From a land-based perspective members suggested there should be more formal and/or generic wording on return to player (RTP) volatility, similar to that for food standards. RTP complaints are high in these venues. GC did historically create wordings (such as, compensated games) – but if there was an agreement on generic wording, the consistency would build trust with consumers. A common approach would be valuable. Understandably there won’t be a common RTP level of payout. For land-based operators, advantages can’t be carried forward like they can for online operators due to different technical standards. Work is being done to improve this and help merge land-based and online operators. A sharper focus is needed on this as there is a risk to volatility levels – operators don’t want to encourage players to take higher risks.

Different rules can sometimes apply to different betting channels in the same land-based venue such as, over the counter bets vs bets made on a Self-Service Betting Terminal (SSBT). That is something that could be confusing for consumers when trying to understand the various terms and conditions which may differ between the methods of bet placement.

5. AOB

A member suggested some of the policy and best practice discussed in this meeting might develop under a gambling ombudsman.

Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) webinar

Feedback was given on the GSGB webinar and the use of these statistics.

GC have said that misreporting will be dealt with. Operators understood that samples are not scaled up to industry but emphasised the importance that these samples are not to be misreported.

Members raised concern that these have been published as official statistics despite GC saying these cannot be compared to other surveys and/or population levels.

Members expressed some concern that messaging will not be fair in reflecting how much industry has improved in terms of overall compliance over recent years when looking at new statistics.

Members encouraged the GC to continue to speak up and challenge all instances of misreporting of GSGB stats. They also offered to help the GC in this aim.

Another concern is that GSGB statistics will be used to drive policy, reference to LCCP on interactions vs customer base – the GC have not been clear on how that will look or whether there will be hike in percentage of interactions operators are taking based on the new statistics over operator internal risk assessments.

The Commissioner present in the meeting commented on the practical and constructive nature of the meeting, how there were positive conversations, and that GC colleagues and members were good at listening to each other.