Gamban CEO Believes Player Protection Still has a Long Way to Go

by Glenn Baird - February 19, 2020

According to Gamban’s founder and CEO, the gambling industry needs to be doing more to protect at-risk gamblers.

Earlier this week Gamban announced that they would be partnering up with Lloyds Bank, ensuring that customers of Lloyds, Bank of Scotland and Halifax are provided with access to their software.

At the time that the partnership was announced, Jack Symons, founder of Gamban, stated: “It’s very positive to see forward-thinking banking institutions such as Lloyds Banking Group rise to the challenge of protecting vulnerable customers from gambling addiction through barriers such as spend control and collaboration with market-leading gambling-blocking technology, Gamban.”

However, in an interview with Gambling Insider he went on to say: “The regulators talk about innovation, but existing tools aren’t being used. To me, in terms of things that will actively help people, the wheel doesn’t always have to be completely reinvented.

“There are tools that are working and helping, they are just not being given the support they need.

“Despite the myriad of ‘reg-tech’ products, the bare minimum of someone saying ‘I’ve got a problem, I need to stop’, is still something that isn’t being supported by many UK operators.

“The fact things that already exist aren’t being supported gives me very little faith that we’ll get where we want to in terms of players protection any time soon.”

Symons went on to praise the protection being provided by banks, asked for Internet Service Providers (ISP) to do more: “Gambling can manifest as a financial problem, and the banks are an unlikely hero. I think given they are not responsible for providing gambling services, the fact they are stepping up to try and protect their vulnerable customers, is something I think should be widely recognised.

“While we’re seeing more banks helping vulnerable customers, I’d like to also see ISP’s stepping forward.

“There’s a fine line between protection and censorship but what I’d like to see is some of the illegal, unregulated offshore content blocked or at least a warning around the sites that shouldn’t be accessible.

“I think access is clearly a big part of this and if people want to be able to switch off access to gambling through their ISP, we are happy to play a role in this that but I think there’s a lot of things that could be done at ISP level.”