SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The SBC Media Challenges in Compliance Survey, commissioned by leading identity verification platform provider IDnow, is published today, providing valuable insights on the international betting and gaming industry’s biggest issues around compliance, fraud and onboarding processes.
———————————————————
The challenges faced by betting and gaming operators’ compliance teams are many and varied. As the industry continues its move towards regulation in new territories and tighter regulation in established markets, and the technological revolution keeps speeding ahead, those issues are in a state of constant change.
With this study, IDnow and SBC Media set out to investigate what the biggest compliance challenges were at the start of 2024, and how they were likely to evolve during the year.
The study looked at four areas: compliance, fraud, onboarding and financial risk checks.
It asked operators working in markets across Europe, the US and Latin America about their experiences and expectations in order to obtain an international perspective on the industry’s biggest pain points.
The key findings included:
- Source of funds checks are the compliance challenge that operators find most difficult
- Bonus abuse was the most-common form of fraud attack identified by operators in 2023
- Operators expect to see a growth in social engineering attacks and document fraud in 2024
- Few operators in the Americas identified money laundering attacks in 2023, but many expect to see this type of fraud become more prevalent
- Security and data privacy, and accuracy are the most important factors for operators when implementing an onboarding procedure
- Submission of personal financial information documentation is the stage that sees the biggest drop-off rates in the onboarding process
- Two-thirds of operators expect the UK Gambling Commission’s planned implementation of financial risk checks to lead to a reduction in customer sign-ups
One other thing that became clear is that technology is ever more important for compliance professionals. The results showed that robust systems have already seen tasks such as identity and age verification become operators’ least difficult jobs, while AI-driven tools are playing an increasingly important role in fighting fraud.
With regulation in many markets becoming more detailed, the imminent introduction of financial risk checks in the UK, and the growing sophistication of fraud attacks, it is certain that having the right compliance and onboarding technology in place will become ever more crucial.
