There is a constant “cat and mouse game” between operators and fraudsters as the threat of bonus abuse continues to increase. 

On a recent SBC Webinar, titled ‘Accelerating profitable play: Preventing bonus abuse while ensuring responsible gambling’, industry experts shared their top tips to fight back against the fraudsters.

Setting a benchmark

“One great call is to make sure that as an organisation, and as a fraud prevention unit, you’ve decided what your level of risk tolerance is for your business and you have that baseline because everything will build off that,” said Brittany Allen, Senior Trust & Safety Architect at Sift.

“The goals you are looking to reach, the metrics that you need to hit to report within your organisation, they all fall back on just how much potential loss can be let through and how much of an appetite we have for potentially turning away some legitimate customers.

“If you don’t know what your overall risk tolerance level is, then you might just think let’s try to stop everything. Let’s put hours and hours of effort into a little piece or an initiative that’ll only move you up a couple of basis points.”

Stephanie Trinh, Sift’s Senior Product Marketing Manager, agreed that there is a need to effectively process the masses of data collected by customers.

She said: “As companies grow and expand, what you see is that there’s a lot of data collected and in different pieces. The throughline is this concept of how can you not only think about data holistically but also operationally and how you align that and map that specifically to the customer journey.

“It’s a big task, but there’s more data accessible than ever before and it’s a blessing and a curse because what do you do with that and how do you keep that clean? I think it’s a tactical strategy that needs to be instilled in the culture moving forward.”

Education

Steven Armstrong, Founder of FRL Compliance, also emphasised the need for education to prevent “mass confusion”.

He said: “I’m always a firm believer that if you’ve educated the right people on the process it makes it a lot easier. In larger areas, you could have 20-50 people looking at the same set of data and because there’s no education behind it, what happens is it just creates mass confusion.

“Before the big meeting when you’ve got 50 people reading a deck, have you spent time with an individual educating them on what it means, why it’s there and a benefit to them.”

He added that often promotional campaigns are activated without being “stress tested” which would allow compliance departments to identify any potential fraud concerns before they go live.

Collaboration

All the participants on the panel agreed that the most important step to mitigate the risk of fraudsters is effective collaboration between departments, as well as the wider igaming industry.

“Ultimately there should be good communication and enough time should be given for analytical teams and fraud teams to prepare for big events and new promos that might lead to abuse,” explained Vladislav Gavilrov, Head of Gaming Fraud at Evoke.

Allen also spoke about the “indispensable skill” of being able to empathise with the needs of other departments.

She said: “We’ve called out the idea of getting over silo teams, I’ve definitely had to do that within my work in fraud prevention. That can be as complicated as being people who shut down the transactions and are seen as the revenue killers trying to work with the internal sales team.

“In those instances, I’ve found that if I can find a common ground then I’m able to show them that I’m not something that’s big and scary and should be kept out of the room until the last minute because that could actually lead to a larger failure of whatever they’re trying to launch.

“It goes back to how [sales and product teams] report their success and how I can show where fraud prevention will keep that safe. You’re so cross-functional in fraud prevention.”

Trinh concluded by calling for a “collaboration of best practices” between vendors and stakeholders in the industry, especially when expanding into new markets. 
For a more in-depth discussion on all these steps, and much more, you can check out the full webinar here.