Survey: Compliance experts expect fraud spike amid Covid-19

Know Your Customer (KYC) specialist, HooYu released the results of a survey today (25 June) showing that 93% of gaming compliance managers expect to see an increase in fraud and chargebacks during by the novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. In total 88% of compliance managers polled by HooYu believe the pandemic presents an increased risk of financial crime across regulated sectors such as online gambling. The survey was conducted after the UK’s Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released warnings in June stating that the pandemic is helping to create opportunities for money laundering and fraud. Factors such as increasing remote consumption of digital services, changes in spending habits widespread remote working and greater financial stress, are all cited as contributing to an increased risk of financial crime. Over 30 operators shared their insights and were polled to gauge the market’s readiness to respond to an increased risk of financial crime in the survey, discussing other KYC issues such as operators’ efforts to understand the impact of the pandemic on processes such as affordability checks. “The fines levied on operators may make the headlines but what never gets reported is the work that egaming compliance managers do to perform KYC,” HooYu marketing director David Pope said. “From work with our clients we see operators not only understanding the money laundering risks but also transitioning from Know Your Customer to a culture of Understand Your Customer”.