Buttigieg and Elliot to lead GVC’s customer care duties

GVC Holdings has strengthened its group customer care units by creating two new leadership roles to maintain direct oversight of customer responsibilities, safeguards and duties.

Confirmed to SBC News, long-term Group AML Director Paul Buttigieg has been promoted to the new position of ‘Director of Player Protection’.

GVC stated that Buttigieg would take on an ‘international remit’ to bolster leadership oversight of operating teams and frontline staff working directly with customers – helping the FTSE100 firm to maintain the industry’s highest player protection standards and protocols across all regulated markets.

The promotion of Buttigieg will be directly supported by the appointment of former NetEnt General Counsel and Gibraltar MD James Elliot as GVC’s first ‘Customer Ombudsman Director’.

Elliot’s appointment is marked as a new approach to customer care, as GVC becomes the first UK gambling operator to appoint an in-house Ombudsman with regards to customer relationships, disputes and duties.

An expert in gaming compliance, corporate duties and risk assessment, Elliot was Director of Legal Affairs for bwin.party Entertainment (2005-2014) prior to the firm’s £1 billion acquisition by GVC Holdings in 2015.

GVC has reformed leadership of its customer care units as the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) and further European regulatory counterparts in Germany, Spain and the Netherlands place consumer protections and safeguards at the top of inbound 2021 legislative reforms.

Meanwhile, UKGC CEO Neil McArthur challenged UK betting leadership to improve all-round consumer protections during 2020 or face further regulatory consequences.

He stated that ‘gambling could not afford to disconnect from its consumer responsibilities’, underlining that following a series of multi-million £ penalties consumer trust had reached an all-time low.

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