As the UK government prepares to proceed with an imminent review of the 2005 Gambling Act, the services that play a key role when it comes to industry compliance are preparing to adapt to regulatory changes.
Speaking to SBC, Alastair Graham Chief Executive of age attribution software provider AgeChecked emphasised that in 2020 it’s key for industry leadership to enhance its skillset and sophistication of tools related to age verification dynamics.
Revealing the firm’s approach to working with the gambling sector, he stated: “AgeChecked is a provider of secure and anonymised age verification services, working with igaming companies to ensure that they meet the ‘ever-changing’ regulations when registering players. As you say, the gambling industry consists of such a diverse range of organisations, therefore compliance requirements differ depending on how and where they operate.
“Our approach is to provide a range of verification services as individual solutions that are all part of a common framework. That means in one integration companies have a choice of verification methods to implement. On the affiliate level, you may need a simple light touch age-gate on the site to stop underage play whereas for an operator you’re likely to require an array of age and identity verification checks, including PEPs and sanctions checks.
“The advantage to this approach is flexibility. Firstly, with such a wide range of requirements, it is the best way to get the best fit at a client level. But also, when a new regulation pops up – e.g. this month’s Dutch age verification regulation – we can quickly add a new service to the platform without our clients having to change anything on their side.”
He went onto outline his perspective as technology stakeholder for overcoming new KYC and compliance demands enforced during the course of 2019.
Adding: “Gambling operators are already used to the KYC demands of the Gambling Commission for customers, but even so, it is extremely impressive how pragmatically and efficiently the gaming industry reacts to regulatory change. We work across many different sectors and the gaming industry, despite having more regulatory changes than most, adapts to the changes more readily than other sectors seem to.
“The key difficulty we face as a technology provider is offering the igaming companies a cost-effective solution that verifies the age of a player with little or no impact on their user experience, which is their key concern. This is why we developed the AgeChecked API which now easily integrates with our client’s websites allowing us to verify a player in the background, securely and quickly, as they are registering.”
