Need for speed: How iSoftBet is adapting to the immediate demands of the newly regulated Swiss market

The pace of change within the gaming industry has accelerated exponentially in recent years with the growth in, and rising importance of, regulated markets a major driving force.

But while most are thriving, some newly regulated territories, such as Sweden, are facing significant teething issues with operators penalised for alleged excessive bonusing, falling short of AML procedures and standards with one household brand losing its licence and another suspending its activities until they have more regulatory clarity.

So, can other markets, such as Switzerland that opened its doors on 1 July – famous for its good-natured, neutral stance – calm the storm and re-set the benchmark as we head towards an increasingly regulated future?

Fast work

As the first, and so far, the only supplier to have been through the stringent Swiss regulation, certification and testing process, I can confidently say Switzerland is going about things the right way.

Switzerland is our 16^th regulated market, so we are used to working with a host of differing regulatory requirements, as well as taking tier-one casino brands to market in record time, but nothing could prepare us for the pace at which the Swiss regulator wanted to set when we learned of its decision to open the process this February.

They announced that any supplier looking to enter the market had to certify games, meet their strict criteria, test all games within approved and pre-accredited labs, and have this in place with licensees ahead of regulation by 30 April. There then followed a 60-day cooling off period set by the regulator to review the licences they had received. Once submitted no changes could be made, if they were then the application would have been rejected until 1 July.

While the regulatory process was well communicated and arguably closest to Sweden in design (which we had completed six months earlier) we had to work harder than ever to meet the timeframe, largely due to all providers being required to meet the ISO 27001 standard which I’m pleased to say we are due to meet in August 2019.

We have spearheaded our tier-one partners’ entry into 16 regulated markets including recent newly regulated jurisdictions Portugal, Belgium, Romania, and the Czech Republic. However, the Swiss testing standards have been higher than normal with, rather unusually, not all labs achieving accreditation. But while the process has been rigorous, this equally sets the bar for other markets that look to regulate in the future, or perhaps look to set higher standards following an initial launch.

The same applies for all responsible gaming requirements with the Swiss regulator learning from recent escalations in RG priority and compliance and implementing strict procedures. Again, these are similar in look and feel to Sweden, although detailed guidance on promotions have yet to play out, and therefore we have yet to enter any early promotional activity.

In the short term, we have and will, continue to integrate our customers directly into our own games, however looking further ahead, our other major route to market in Switzerland will be through our Game Aggregation Platform (GAP). This enables operators to access – using a one-time integration – not only our 150+ proprietary games, but also more than 3,500 of the industry’s best performing slot and table game titles from more than 50 of the world’s largest egaming suppliers.

These are early days, and change is inevitable when working within such a new environment, but we’re delighted to lead the way and pioneer the path towards an increasingly regulated future, leading local brands into what we believe could be one of Europe’s strongest and most well thought out territories.

Mark Halstead is the compliance manager at iSoftBet and has played a leading role in securing licences for iSoftBet in multiple regulated markets including the UK, Alderney, Italy and Romania