Willem Van Oort: “The Leaders in Compliance Conference aims to provide knowledge and networking”
Gaming In Europe founder reflected on the upcoming conference and the importance that compliance has taken lately.
Exclusive interview.- Leaders in Compliance is a new initiative by Gaming in Europe that aims to offer knowledge and networking to compliance professionals in Europe’s regulated gambling industry. The conference will cover a variety of compliance-related topics, including licensing, KYC, AML, marketing compliance, AI, ESG, and much more.
Before the event, Gaming In Europe founder Willem Van Oort sat down with Focus Gaming News to discuss what are the main goals for the event, the challenges the industry faces nowadays and the importance of getting other regulatory stakeholders involved.
What inspired you to create Leaders in Compliance, and what is its mission within the gaming industry?
Over the past fifteen years or so, an increasing number of jurisdictions have started to regulate their online gambling markets. With the move away from grey markets, compliance has naturally become more important.
A second development is that many jurisdictions that already have regulations are tightening their regulations considerably. With online gambling – like other things online – becoming relatively more important, as well as visible, this is hardly a surprising development. Still, the regulatory and compliance burdens faced by operators have become progressively labyrinthine. We aim to help industry professionals to navigate this increasingly complex environment.
With regulations evolving globally, what are the biggest compliance challenges operators and suppliers face today?
There are two challenges that I think are worth highlighting. First, operators that are active in multiple jurisdictions are increasingly facing a situation in which they must deal with several highly complex regulatory environments. Due to regulatory differences, this is not easily scalable. So how can these larger operators deal with this? That is one topic that the Leaders in Compliance will address.
Second, the field of compliance is changing. Electronic monitoring systems mean that it is increasingly becoming a technical discipline. Besides opportunities, this also brings its own challenges.
How does Leaders in Compliance help industry stakeholders navigate complex regulatory landscapes?
Like our other “Gaming in” events (i.e., Gaming in Germany, Gaming in Holland, and Gaming in Spain), the Leaders in Compliance Conference aims to provide knowledge and networking.
By this, I mean that we invite key decision-makers and thought leaders to share their viewpoints and experiences in an environment that is highly conducive to both formal and informal exchanges of knowledge. In other words, we facilitate industry professionals learning from each other. Going off the feedback we receive, we believe this works quite well!
Looking ahead, what are your goals for Leaders in Compliance, and how do you plan to expand its impact?
Our first objective is to establish ourselves as a space where valuable information is shared. Looking at the headline speakers of this year’s Leaders in Compliance Conference, I think we are already well on our way. We will have very senior compliance professionals from Betsson, Tipico, and Unibet on stage. These are people worth listening to.
If you have the right people and the right topics, other people will come, too. This is important because face-to-face interaction is still something very valuable when it comes to truly understanding each other. We are currently working on getting some regulators to attend our event. We will see to what extent it happens this year.
This fits with our longer-term goal. We are not just interested in getting an intra-industry dialogue started, we want to get other regulatory stakeholders involved, too.
“Our first objective is to establish ourselves as a space where valuable information is shared.”
Gaming In Europe founder Willem Van Oort.
