Marina Ilina, RedCore: “All the governments need to understand that they need to make regulations clear for the igaming market”

Shows & conferences - 25 November, 2025

During the latest edition of SiGMA Central Europe 2025, Focus Gaming News spoke with Marina Ilina, CEO and Founder of RedCore, about why the company chose to specialise in RegTech and consultancy, how its technology helps ensure transparency and compliance in high‑risk sectors such as igaming and fintech, the main challenges in building robust frameworks, the gaps governments face when regulating igaming, and her strategic view of regulation as the foundation of all technology.

Ilina said that moving into regulatory technology was “the logical way of working” for RedCore, given the complexity of online gaming for both authorities and operators. “The industry of igaming is quite tricky for government and it’s quite tricky for the customers,” she noted. Against this backdrop, RedCore sees a clear responsibility: “We understand that we need to share our expertise and our knowledge to make the RegTech and regulation of every market clear for government and normal for operators.”

Explaining how RedCore supports transparency in igaming, fintech and other fields, Ilina highlighted the role of the company’s software in monitoring behaviour and enforcing rules. “Our software helps operators, and it can help regulators to control the transactions, suspicious transactions, to control the compliance and the right rules of each government,” she said. The aim is “to make operators work more clearly” by embedding regulatory requirements into day‑to‑day processes and providing oversight tools that both sides can rely on.

Asked about the biggest challenges in building compliance for high‑risk sectors, Ilina stressed the importance of starting early and designing from first principles. “It’s very important not to start at the end of the process,” she said. Instead, companies must “make the basic of all the compliance processes from the beginning and make the process very clear for all the parties.” In her view, success is “about the strategy from the beginning” rather than retrofitting controls onto existing operations.

Turning to the public sector, Ilina said governments increasingly recognise the need to regulate igaming but often lack hands‑on experience. “Nowadays all the governments… understand that they need to make regulations clear for the igaming market, but it’s very difficult for them because they don’t have practice, expertise,” she observed. As a result, “they need some companies, some people who will tell them how it works – how it works, how the system can be treated and how to make all the regulations clear.”

For Ilina, effective regulation must balance the needs of all stakeholders: operators, players and states. The goal is “for all the operators to pay normal taxes, for players to be safe with using igaming products and for government to control the market and to understand is it okay or not for each country.” RedCore’s consulting and technology are designed to help authorities reach that equilibrium while giving operators clear, workable rules.

Looking ahead, Ilina described RegTech as much more than a layer of controls. “For us, the RegTech regulation, it’s not about the process, it’s about the strategic foundation of all our technologies,” she said. The first priority is always “to make the process safe and compliant,” and only then “to solve all the demands of the market.” In other words, regulatory design and risk management sit at the core of RedCore’s product vision, rather than being an afterthought.

Summing up RedCore’s work in regulated environments, Ilina chose an evocative metaphor: “Like playing chess.” It is a reminder that building and maintaining compliance in igaming and other high‑risk sectors requires strategic thinking, anticipation of future moves by both regulators and market participants, and a long‑term view of how rules, technology and business models interact.