René Jansen, the chairman of the Dutch regulator, has repeated his wish for the KSA to be able to use clandestine techniques to more stringently enforce operator duty of care responsibilities.
Writing in a blog post, Jansen noted that Kansspelautoriteit had “raised this problem” with Franc Weerwind, the Netherlands’ Minister for Legal Protection.
He reiterated that the KSA could “work much more effectively with the help of 'mystery shopping'," which would offer “better insight into the (marketing) techniques that providers use to attract and retain players.”
Jansen was responding to criticism of the supposed lack of oversight from the KSA into online operators from the Consumers’ Association and TV program Kassa.
He said the regulator’s critics are asking a “very fair question” and admitted the KSA is not given “disguised” access to legal gambling sites and cannot make deposits, “which means they cannot participate in gambling games themselves.”
While using the data vaults of providers to explore player interaction is a compromise, Jansen said this is “not easy or complete and it is not ideal, searching through the data 'haystack'.”
Elsewhere in his blog post, Jansen revealed a change of enforcement focus on operators who fail to comply, following the regulator’s biggest-ever fine for Gammix – which has contested the €19.6m penalty.
The KSA will now focus more on “making ‘short hits,’” Jansen said, contacting operators “immediately” after signals about compliance failings are detected.
The regulator will ask what took place, what the operator did to prevent the failing and to what extent it acted or failed to act culpably.
“This way the provider knows that he is under a magnifying glass,” the outgoing chairman said.
“By communicating about these types of conversations and warnings, we also show other providers what we consider desirable or undesirable and how we deal with signals from outside.”
