Latest News
GambleAware Publishes New Reports and Guide for Financial Services Industry to Help Prevent Gambling Harm
GambleAware has published a new report by the Behavioural Insights Team which analyses behavioural datasets to understand whether these could be used to build a clearer picture of the ways in which people gamble, identify possible harms, and eventually inform prevention, treatment, and support responses.
The commissioned research analysed bank transactional data from Monzo and HSBC, aiming to shed new light on what these datasets can, and cannot, tell us about gambling behaviour. The reports demonstrated that bank customer and transactional data can offer valuable insights into the success of gambling blocking tools and also provide unique profiles of gamblers. For example, of those using Monzo’s gambling blocker, it was found that the week before gamblers activated the block, their average daily gambling spend tripled. Specific profiles of gamblers were also revealed by the research, such as that gamblers had less money on average in their Monzo internal saving pots than non-gamblers, or that gamblers ranked “Very Concerning” by HSBC had on average 35.6 gambling transactions per month, compared to 15.6 in those ranked “Concerning”, and just 1.2 in the “Control” group.
Taken individually, however, these datasets are not enough to understand whether a customer is at risk of experiencing gambling harms. A dataset from a single bank is unlikely to offer a full picture of an individual’s spending, and so these exploratory research projects illustrated that further research is needed to create a fuller picture of an individual’s overall financial wellbeing.
“Our research with HSBC and Monzo has demonstrated that bank transactional data can be a useful tool in identifying gambling behaviours and the unique profiles of gamblers, but further work is needed to understand how such data can be used robustly. Different banks may use different factors, and different thresholds to identify gambling, and future work could look at developing a more standard operating model of how this kind of data should be used to identify those at risk of harm,” Dr Simon McNair, Advisor at BIT, said
“Our research with GambleAware helps us to understand gambling-related behaviours so that we can provide the best support to our customers. This includes opt-in solutions such as a gambling restriction feature to help people control their urge to gamble and automatic declines or referrals for lending to help prevent the customer getting into debt. Customers can also appoint third parties to help manage their finances either through a third-party mandate or our Independence Service. In addition, our specialist support team are on hand to aid customers at risk of financial harm and can refer to trusted external organisations where needed. We continue to work with charities such as Gamble Aware on other ways in which we can ensure these customers have access to the right support,” Maxine Pritchard, Head of Financial Inclusion and Vulnerability at HSBC, said.
“Our work with the Behavioural Insights Team has provided us with important insights into gambling behaviour and the impacts of gambling. At Monzo, this is an area we care deeply about and we’ve had amazing success so far with our gambling block, which has been used by more than 350,000 customers since its launch in 2017. We’re excited to use these insights to inform future work in this area, further reduce gambling harm and provide our customers with even more control over their financial lives,” Natalie Ledward, Head of Vulnerable Customers at Monzo, said.
GambleAware has commissioned the Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol to produce a practical guide for financial services seeking to protect customers from gambling-related financial harms. The guide offers real-life examples of what firms can do to identify and support customers who are at risk of gambling-related financial harm. It highlights the value of financial firms proactively analysing customer transaction data for spending patterns and behavioural signs that might indicate gambling-related vulnerability and enable firms to take action to prevent harm occurring.
“At a conservative estimate, at least five million people in Britain experience harmful gambling, either because of their own gambling or someone else’s. Regulated financial services firms are well-placed to address the financial harms linked to gambling-related vulnerability and our practical guide shows them how. Doing this may have knock-on benefits for other dimensions of gambling harm, such as people’s mental health,” Professor Sharon Collard, Research Director at the University of Bristol’s Personal Finance Research Centre, said.
“This research from the Behavioural Insights Team is a good first step to explore how bank transactional data may be able to identify behaviours indicative of gambling harm. Whilst more research is needed into this area, we encourage all financial institutions, including those from non-bank settings, to make the most of the new guide to see what they can do to protect their customers from gambling harm. By working with financial services and promoting the advice and support available, we can work collaboratively to respond to customer need to keep people safe from gambling harm,” Zoë Osmond, CEO at GambleAware, said.
Powered by WPeMatico
Acquisitions/Merger
THE VISUALIZE GROUP COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF BMM TESTLABS
FIRST-EVER PRIVATE EQUITY ACQUISITION IN THE NORTH AMERICAN REGULATED GAMING TESTING AND INSPECTION MARKET
Transaction Receives Required Regulatory Approvals Across Multiple Global Jurisdictions
The Visualize Group (“Visualize”), a private investment firm focused on concentrated investing in mission-critical, services-based companies, announced the completion of its acquisition of BMM Testlabs (“BMM”), the longest established and most experienced leader in testing, inspection, compliance, and certification (“TICC”) services for the regulated global gaming industry. The transaction has received required regulatory approvals across multiple global jurisdictions, underscoring the confidence of gaming regulators worldwide in this partnership. Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction represents the first-ever control acquisition of a major regulated gaming testing laboratory, marking the opening of a market that has been structurally inaccessible to institutional capital.
Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, and founded in 1981, BMM serves gaming product suppliers, operators, and regulators across six continents, employing more than 700 professionals in 16 offices worldwide and holding more than 700 regulatory and related business licenses — one of the broadest regulatory footprints of any organization in the gaming industry.
The transaction represents a structural first: no major gaming testing laboratory in North America has ever been acquired by a private equity sponsor. For decades, the regulatory complexity of the TICC market — requiring hundreds of individual licenses across dozens of jurisdictions — has insulated these businesses from institutional ownership. The successful navigation of that complexity, culminating in regulatory approvals across multiple jurisdictions, establishes BMM as the first institutionally owned platform in the space and positions it as the natural acquirer of choice as consolidation accelerates.
Martin Storm, President and Chief Executive Officer of BMM Testlabs, said, “Today marks the beginning of an exciting and ambitious new chapter for BMM. Gaming regulators across the globe have endorsed this partnership through their approvals, and I am proud of the trust we have built over more than four decades. With Visualize’s support, we can now invest aggressively in our people, our technology, and our global footprint in ways that were not previously possible. Our customers should expect faster turnaround times, expanded jurisdictional coverage, deeper technical capabilities, and a level of service and partnership that no other testing laboratory in the world can match. We are building the definitive platform for gaming compliance, and we are just getting started.”
C. C. Melvin Ike, Founder and Managing Partner of Visualize, said, “We built Visualize to own irreplaceable businesses in markets where regulatory complexity creates durable, defensible demand. BMM is a clear expression of this thesis. The regulated gaming industry generates more than $600 billion in annual gross gaming revenue globally, and its TICC infrastructure — the certification and compliance layer that every product must pass through before it can reach market — is structurally underpenetrated by institutional capital. BMM’s multi-decade track record of regulatory trust and an irreplaceable stable of licenses represent a moat that would take a new entrant decades and significant capital to replicate. We look forward to backing the entire BMM team, supporting the customers that drive the industry, and preserving the trust of the regulators that protect it.
Advisors
Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and Greenberg Traurig acted as legal and regulatory counsel, respectively, to Visualize. Gadens, BDO, and Cooper Levenson acted as legal, financial and regulatory counsel to BMM Testlabs.
The post THE VISUALIZE GROUP COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF BMM TESTLABS appeared first on Americas iGaming & Sports Betting News.
Founder and CEO of SCCG Management
SCCG Partners with The Vegas Walk Method® to Advance Player Empowerment and Sustainable Gaming Infrastructure Across Tribal and Commercial Markets
SCCG Management, a global advisory firm specializing in gaming, sports betting, iGaming, and emerging regulatory innovation, today announced a strategic partnership with The Vegas Walk Method®, a behavioral framework designed to promote player empowerment and sustainable engagement within high-volatility gaming environments.
Through this partnership, SCCG will support the strategic positioning, enterprise introductions, and market expansion of The Vegas Walk Method® across tribal and commercial gaming operators. The collaboration focuses on integrating the method as a player sovereignty-aligned infrastructure layer that empowers players to maintain intentional engagement while supporting operators in meeting evolving responsible gaming and regulatory objectives.
The Vegas Walk Method® is a patent-pending, trauma-aware framework built around a structured, player-defined containment approach that operates alongside an operator’s existing customer journey model. Unlike abstinence-based models, the method does not monitor or observe player behavior in-session. Instead, it provides tools that help players maintain psychological stability, develop volatility awareness, and define personal session boundaries, , and while continuing to participate in recreational gaming.
“The industry conversation around responsible gaming is evolving,” said Stephen Crystal, Founder and CEO of SCCG Management. “Operators, particularly in tribal markets, are increasingly focused on long-term sustainability, player empowerment, and proactive regulatory leadership. The Vegas Walk Method® provides a framework that aligns with those priorities by placing agency in the hands of the player while supporting operators with measurable, auditable outcomes. We believe this represents an important evolution in how the industry approaches sustainable engagement.”
Originally developed with operator constraints in mind, The Vegas Walk Method® is deployable through software at scale and designed to integrate seamlessly within existing operational environments. The framework surfaces structured insights for reporting and evaluation while maintaining a “zero-observation” model that respects player autonomy. It is jurisdiction-agnostic and adaptable across physical casinos, online gaming environments, and emerging digital verticals.
Central to the The Vegas Walk Method® is the concept of structured session containment, volatility awareness, and repeatable practices that build consistency across sessions. By encouraging intentional engagement and mitigating “flow state” burnout, the framework aims to support sustainable revenue models that reduce churn while protecting long-term guest relationships. For tribal operators in particular, the method aligns with player sovereignty principles and community-first mandates by reinforcing personal self-governance and sustainable play.
The partnership also positions The Vegas Walk Method® as a proactive infrastructure solution within broader regulatory and innovation discussions. As the gaming industry continues to expand into new digital formats, including prediction markets and other high-frequency engagement environments, the underlying concept offers potential application beyond traditional casino floors.
“Stephen and the team at SCCG have spent decades at the forefront of gaming innovation, and they understand instinctively that player empowerment and operator performance aren’t in tension — they’re the same goal. This partnership lets us bring The Vegas Walk Method® to the operators who are ready to lead on sustainable engagement, not just respond to regulatory pressure,” said Matthew Reynolds, Inventor & CEO of The Vegas Walk Method® As regulatory scrutiny and public expectations continue to evolve, SCCG and The Vegas Walk Method® will work together to introduce a player sovereignty-first, empowerment-driven approach to responsible gaming that balances operator performance with long-term player wellbeing.
The post SCCG Partners with The Vegas Walk Method® to Advance Player Empowerment and Sustainable Gaming Infrastructure Across Tribal and Commercial Markets appeared first on Americas iGaming & Sports Betting News.
AI
Despite AI’s Rise, Fraud Teams Keep Growing — SEON 2026 Report
SEON, the command centre for immediate Fraud Prevention and AML Compliance, has unveiled AI Reality Check: 2026 Fraud & AML Leaders Report, the second iteration of its sector research, derived from a worldwide survey of 1,010 leaders in fraud, risk, and compliance spanning payments, fintech, financial services, retail, eCommerce, and gaming.
The figures reveal an unforeseen narrative: AI is ubiquitous, yet operations are not becoming easier to manage. Currently, 98% of organizations utilize AI in fraud and AML processes, with 95% expressing confidence in its effectiveness; meanwhile, headcount plans rose from 88% to 94% year-over-year, and 83% anticipate budget increases in 2026.
Complexity Is Surpassing Automation
AI has not lessened the workload — it has revealed the extent of work that has always existed. Fraud losses are increasingly approaching revenue growth, threats are advancing more rapidly, and disjointed systems restrict the true potential of AI at scale. Key year-over-year shift:
Leadership’s confidence in their teams’ performance is lagging. The number of leaders who disagreed with the statement, “fraud losses are growing faster than revenue,” dropped by almost 40% from the previous year
Inside the Numbers:
AI is baseline, not experimental
- 98% already integrate AI into daily workflows (only 2% still planning)
- 95% are confident AI can detect and prevent fraud (52% very confident)
- Top use case: AI/ML for transaction monitoring (30%)
Fraud and AML investment keeps climbing
- 83% expect fraud/AML budgets to increase in 2026
- 94% plan to add at least one full-time hire (up from 88% in 2025)
- 85% plan to add a vendor, 49% plan to replace one
Fragmentation is the bottleneck
- 95% claim “some integration” between fraud and AML systems
- Only 47% run fully integrated workflows; the rest rely on partial connections
- 80% say getting a unified view of data is challenging
For many, time-to-value remains slow
Only 10% go live in under two weeks
38% take 1–3 months, 24% take 4+ months
When implementations run long, top impacts include increased costs (52%) and prolonged fraud exposure (47%)
Teams are growing, not shrinking
94% plan to increase headcount despite automation gains
85% see AI agents as support/augmentation, not replacement (only 12% see eventual replacement)
Top fraud threats reported:
- Account takeovers: 26%
- Promo/discount abuse: 18%
- Return fraud: 18%
“Fraud and financial crime were supposed to become more manageable as AI matured,” said Tamas Kadar, CEO and co-founder, SEON. “Instead, 2026 is the year leaders are confronting a more complicated reality. AI adoption is real, confidence is high, but the scale and pace of fraud — compounded by fragmented systems — continue to drive increased investment rather than reduced overhead. The bottleneck is no longer whether AI works. It’s everything around it: disconnected data, siloed teams, slow implementations. The organisations that pull ahead will be the ones that unify fraud and AML intelligence, shorten the distance between threats and controls, and treat integration as strategy, not plumbing.”
Fast-Growing Companies Invest in Integration Early
Organisations growing 51%+ are nearly twice as likely as slower peers to report that achieving unified visibility is “not very challenging.” They treat integration as infrastructure, not an IT project.
What’s Next: From “Does AI Work?” to “Can We Trust It?”
With adoption near-universal, the conversation is shifting to governance, explainability and accountability:
- 78% say decentralised digital identity will become central to fraud/AML
- 33% cite data privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA) as the biggest external force shaping AML
- 25% point to criminals’ advancing use of AI and obfuscation techniques
The post Despite AI’s Rise, Fraud Teams Keep Growing — SEON 2026 Report appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
-
iGaming7 days agoPRAGMATIC PLAY UNEARTHS PROGRESSIVE MULTIPLIERS IN ROLLING IN TREASURES
-
Comatel6 days agoCOMATEL CELEBRARÁ UNA FIESTA PARA CIENTOS DE OPERADORES TRAS FINALIZAR EL PRIMER DÍA DE LA FERIA ESPAÑOLA, INTERAZAR
-
Booming Games7 days agoBooming Games Introduces Instastrike, the Latest Diamond Hits Trio
-
ELA Games7 days agoELA Games Powers the Reels with Retro-Electric Slot “Rapid Wild”
-
Africa7 days agoGaming Realms Makes South African Debut in Partnership with Hollywoodbets
-
Alex Green Vice President Games at ZEAL7 days agoWunderino Adds ZEAL’s Premium Slots as Partnership Kicks Off
-
Blueprint Gaming7 days agoNew collect modifiers and dual bonus offering star in Blueprint Gaming’s King Kong™ Splash
-
Brasil7 days agoBrasil evita choque fiscal y apuestas entran en fase reputacional en LATAM



