PAGCOR’s recent moves to better regulate the Philippines’ growing online gaming market presents a unique opportunity for global gaming test lab GLI, both in terms of working with industry participants and with the regulator itself, according to GLI’s Managing Director Asia-Pacific, Richard Howarth.
His comments come after GLI earlier this year became the first gaming testing company to achieve accreditation as an Independent Testing Laboratory (ITL) by PAGCOR, described by Howarth as covering all of the company’s testing platforms but “very strongly skewed towards iGaming.”
While GLI is already well-embedded in the Philippines, Howarth said that gaining ITL accreditation at a time when PAGCOR is enhancing its oversight of the online industry opens plenty of doors.
“Our business is to operate and help markets regulate, so we’re all for regulated markets. It gives us bigger opportunities,” he explained. “It gives the market a very strong opportunity to be sustainable, so taxes go to the right place, they get reinvested, it’s a safer environment, and helps improve responsible gambling and money laundering enforcement.
“So, as far as having and operating a regulated market, it provides us with more testing and certifying opportunities there. And in this case, as GLI has done many times, we are first in market with the regulator, first in market to help regulate the jurisdiction and first in market to be accredited by PAGCOR.”
As reported by Inside Asian Gaming, PAGCOR has implemented in recent months a raft of new controls around its domestic online gaming industry, including the implementation of a new regulatory framework for B2B suppliers under which they must be fully accredited, a Minimum Guaranteed Fee to be paid by all licensed operators and caps on the cash rebate and cashback incentives online operators can offer.
Howarth noted that part of GLI’s work in the Philippines includes working with PAGCOR directly on the implementation of such measures.
“Part of [our remit] will be advising them on regulatory standards on iGaming,” he said. “That’s sort of conversational on one level, and then formal training later to come.”
Security minded
One of GLI’s latest initiatives is GLI Secure, which provides cybersecurity, audit and governance services around the protection of data.
According to Howarth, this is also a key focus of GLI across Asia-Pacific – particularly in the wake of recent cyberattacks on gaming companies around the world.
“GLI Secure can do anything from data security audit and checking to ISS and accreditation to creating scenarios where your data is completely protected,” Howarth explained. “One thing that we like doing is having a look at how data can be protected and if there is an infringement, if there is some problem with data integrity, how do we keep that operation going?
“I spoke at Regulating the Game in March about an example of a leading casino group that was offline for 10 days-plus and the impact that had on their bottom line because someone had hacked into their data. Their integrity had been cut so they couldn’t keep operating.
“That’s why you need to understand the impacts of data breaches and understand how to avoid them. And of course, when and if it does happen, how do you keep operating whilst you’re searching for the hacker or trying to find out what happened?
“That’s an area we at GLI are focussed on right now.”
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