In February 2021, Kindred Group decided to communicate our Journey towards Zero ambition and to openly report our share of revenue derived from high-risk players who show signs of harmful gambling, becoming the first gambling operator to do so. Reporting aims to measure our progress and benchmark against our ambition to reach zero per cent revenue from harmful gambling. The journey towards Zero also aims to increase transparency, facilitate a fact-based discussion and pave the way for wider industry to follow in our footsteps. The figures are reported every quarter, together with a measurement of the effectiveness of Kindred’s sustainability work.
In the third quarter of 2023, Kindred’s share of revenue from harmful gambling was 3.3 per cent. During the quarter, Kindred has delivered improvements in the efficiency of interventions. A positive trajectory was also seen regarding detected customers improving their gambling behaviour after an intervention. This quarter, the figure stood at 86.7 per cent, marking an improvement from 83 per cent reported one year ago.
Our commitment to progress continues as we roll out further PS-EDS (Player Safety Early Detection System) automated interventions; this has enabled us to increase the volume of cases handled and improve the speed at which we can provide interventions. The short, customer-friendly messages provide tailored insight into the customer’s gambling activity, promoting awareness and encouraging using our Responsible Gambling tools.
To give an example of how Kindred works daily towards our Journey towards Zero ambition, we met up with Sara Lennartsson, Sustainability Partner at Kindred Group. Sara has worked at Kindred for almost four years. She describes her role: “As a Sustainability Partner I work with tasks that are related to us being a sustainable and responsible operator. That includes outbound contacts regarding responsible gambling, compliance and GDPR.”
Sara is part of a team responsible for all personal outgoing communication related to PS-EDS and responsible gambling. Working as a Sustainability Partner requires specific training where the team have learning sessions and discussions about their responsibility to improve their work, processes and outcomes.
She explains how Sara and the Sustainability Partners work: “A Sustainability Partner handles the contact with customers that have been detected on our monitoring system PS-EDS and escalated by the Player Risk Team after a manual review to perform a personalised intervention. We then review the customer profile, and prepare for the needed interaction, for example a phone call. Although prepared for the call, you never know how the customer will receive our communication. When we are asked to do a phone call, we always try to get a hold of the customer and if they don’t answer we implement other safety tools, initiatives or communication channels. Most are very friendly, and we have a great conversation about their gambling and gambling in general. I have to say the majority of customers appreciate us reaching out to them. They know we are doing this because we care about their wellbeing.”
