Why Compliance Audits Matter in iG Gaming
Compliance is not a task that can be performed once by an iGaming business and thereafter forgotten. The industry is constantly developing, updating its offers and campaigns. Even the most well-managed business can fall out of compliance with regulations if not for regular reviews.
Compliance audits are essential for all iGaming business owners, operators, publishers and affiliate marketers. These audits can help each of these categories of companies to identify if they are out of date with regulations and offers.
Instead of using compliance audits to react to regulatory concerns, the best iGaming businesses use these audits as a pro-active strategy to protect their revenue and partnerships with other companies in the industry.
What Is a Compliance Audit?
A compliance audit is essentially a review of all the marketing materials that a company creates for its industry.
The main goal of a compliance audit is to find areas where the company can improve the marketing materials they create before those suggestions become a risk for the company.
There are several different categories of marketing materials that can be audited by an iGaming business, such as:
Website content
Promotional content
Affiliate content
Responsible gambling content
Licensing content
Internal content
Regular audits will ensure that the company maintains consistency in the content they publish.
Why Regular Audits Are Important
The iGaming industry is rapidly developing and changing. As such, the companies that operate the sites must frequently update their offers to remain competitive. These offers include:
Bonus offers
Terms and conditions
Available jurisdictions
Accepted payments
Licensing information
In addition to these changes, the governments that regulate the industries also develop new regulations regarding advertising and responsible gambling.
Many companies do not routinely review their websites to make sure that their offers are up to date. As a result, their websites may contain outdated content for several months at a time.
Protect Revenue
If an iGaming business is not compliant with regulations, there are several potential consequences for the company:
Suspended affiliate commissions
Removed operator partnerships
Advertising restrictions
Regulatory penalties
Loss of player trust
If the company reviews its content and processes regular compliance audits, it can prevent these consequences.
Review Promotional Content
In addition to reviewing the business’s general website content, there are also specific pages with promotional content that need to be reviewed. These pages include content about:
Welcome bonuses
Wagering requirements
Deposit bonuses
Offer expiration dates
Promotional eligibility
Verifying that the promotional content is accurate will ensure that users have the best experience on the company’s website.
Verify Affiliate Links
All the affiliate links on a company’s website should be working at all times. If they are not, the company can lose:
Commissions
Users
The ability to effectively market their company and its offers
Including an audit to verify all affiliate links will ensure that the company maintains strong marketing efforts.
Check Responsible Gambling Messaging
All companies that operate online casinos must include responsible gambling messaging on their website. These pages should include information about:
Age restrictions
Responsible gambling messages
Links to responsible gambling support organizations
Resources to self-exclude from gambling
These messages must appear on all company websites to ensure regulatory compliance as well as protection of the users.
Confirm Geographic Accuracy
Many iGaming operators only accept players from specific locations. These localized pages should be reviewed for accuracy and updated if necessary. Pages that should be reviewed include those with information about:
Operator availability
Licensing information for specific countries
Country-specific bonuses
Accepted payments from these countries
Evaluating these local websites will help the company to avoid any compliance issues.
Evaluate Marketing Claims
The marketing content for iGaming websites should be factual. Claims that should be avoided in marketing include those that:
Guarantee winnings to users
Misrepresent the bonuses that users will receive
Overstate the benefits of various offers
Encourage irresponsible gambling habits
Ensuring that all marketing content for the company’s offers is factual will help the company to avoid regulatory issues.
Review Privacy Practices
As with any website, many iGaming publishers collect some information from their visitors. The compliance audits for each company should include an evaluation of their:
Privacy policy
Contact forms
Subscriptions
User accounts
Ensuring that each company is compliant in its privacy policy will ensure that users trust the company and that it remains in good standing with the regulators.
Audit Internal Processes
In addition to reviewing the website and marketing materials, publishers should also review their internal processes. Auditing the company’s internal processes will help them to avoid any future compliance issues. Processes that can be audited include:
Content approval process
Employee training
Documentation process
Affiliate communication process
Incident reporting process
Using technology to improve compliance audits
As many companies grow, it is often difficult to review all their content. However, using technology to automate some of the audit processes will save the companies time. Some processes that can be automated include:
Detecting broken links on the website
Scanning all landing pages
Monitoring all website content
Verifying all geo-targeting
Sending alerts about policy changes
By automating these processes, companies can perform more frequent compliance audits.
Involve multiple departments in the audit process
Each department of an iGaming company should play a role in the compliance audit process. These departments may include:
Marketing
Affiliate managers
Legal
Product managers
Engineering
By involving each of these departments in the audit, the company will save time and resources while improving the accuracy of the audits.
Creating an audit schedule
Rather than performing audits every few years, they should occur more regularly. Some audit schedules for companies include:
Monthly reviews of website content
Quarterly compliance audits
Annual reviews of company policies
By scheduling these audits, the company will reduce the chance of encountering compliance issues.
Measuring the success of each audit
Many companies will want to measure the success of each compliance audit to determine their areas for improvement. Some indicators for measuring the success of a compliance audit may include:
Number of outdated promotions removed
Number of broken links fixed
Number of website content updates made
Number of compliance issues reduced
Time to complete each audit
By measuring these indicators, each company can improve their compliance and marketing processes over time.
Common findings of compliance audits
Some of the most common findings from compliance audits include:
Expired bonus offers
Incorrect affiliate links
Missing content disclosures
Outdated licensing information
Broken landing pages
Inaccurate responsible gambling messaging
These findings, once corrected, often lead to the improvement of the company’s compliance and conversion rates.
The future of compliance audits
As technology develops, so will the methods used to audit compliance of iGaming websites. Some of these innovations will include:
AI to analyze website content
Automated monitoring of regulations
Real-time compliance alerts
Continuous website scanning for compliance
Intelligent risk scoring for specific offers
These innovations will allow the companies to remain in compliance with the regulations while reducing the amount of effort that they must devote to the process.
Best practices for conducting compliance audits
In order to ensure that each company’s compliance audits are as effective as possible, they should follow a few basic steps and practices. These practices may include:
Creating written procedures for the audits
Reviewing promotional content
Verifying all affiliate links
Updating licensing information
Including responsible gambling messaging on websites
Monitoring regulatory changes
Automating the audits
Documenting each audit
Following these practices will ensure that the company can remain in compliance with regulations in the long term.
Final Thoughts
A compliance audit is one of the most effective methods of ensuring that an iGaming business is not exposed to unnecessary risks. By reviewing their content, promotions, affiliate links, internal processes and regulatory requirements on a regular basis, publishers and operators will be able to identify any issues that may impact their revenue before they develop.
Rather than viewing compliance audits as an unnecessary task for iGaming companies, these audits are an essential investment in a company’s revenue and long-term success. Thus, conducting compliance audits for all iGaming websites will ensure that each business maintains the trust of its players and operators while enjoying sustainable growth.