Kindred Group’s work is guided by our journey towards zero ambition, stating that over time, zero percent of the revenue from our platform should be generated from high-risk players who show signs of harmful gambling. In 2021, Kindred began publicly reporting the share of revenue derived from harmful gambling every quarter. One of the reasons we are doing this is to measure our progress in public, and also facilitate a fact-based discussion and pave the way for the wider industry to follow in our footsteps.
To understand what the numbers say, we asked Esther Scheepers, Head of Responsible Gambling, to elaborate on the development of the share of revenue from harmful gambling in Q1 2023.
Q: Hi Esther, in the first quarter of 2023, Kindred Group’s share of revenue from harmful gambling decreased from 3.3 to 3.0 per cent and the improvement effect after interventions was 83.0 per cent, against 82.1 per cent in Q4 2022. What lies behind these figures? And what has been the most crucial factor of this quarters decrease?
The journey towards zero result is underpinned by several complex factors. We must account for a variety of influencing variables and acknowledge that change does not happen overnight.
That said, the numbers do look encouraging. What catches my attention even more is that the Q1 result is now the third consecutive quarterly improvement that we have achieved. So we are not only working our way towards our stated objective, but it also looks like the impact of our efforts is becoming more consistent.
The second part of the question is an interesting one. It is common knowledge that our approach is multi-faceted and includes anything from engaging proactively with external stakeholders to using technology to improve automated detection and intervention. But a key aspect of our work where I am really pleased with the results is our sustained focus on prioritising the issue internally. By driving internal communications on the topic, we manage to heighten awareness, align efforts, and internally generate the resources and tools that we need to have in place to achieve our objective.
In fact, I really wish to take this opportunity to thank Kindred’s Responsible Gambling- and customer-facing teams, as well as our brilliant colleagues in tech for their commitment and contribution to the good fight. I also would like to raise the importance of the commercial department within Kindred on this journey, such as our General Managers, who all play an important role in reaching our ambition of zero per cent revenue from harmful gambling. Because in the the end, to be truly successful, our efforts to defeat harmful gambling need to be institutionalized within our organization and integrated across the breadth of our work processes.
Q: We don’t just report on the share of revenue derived from harmful gambling, but also the improvement effect after interventions. Could you please explain what the effect after interventions means and how that work is executed?
Improvement effect after intervention looks at customer behaviour for the 30-day period following a detection via our automated internal monitoring system, PS-EDS (Player Safety Early Detection System).
The work following detection in higher risk cases involves a manual review and intervention done by our analysts and customer-facing teams.
Monitoring this KPI allows for a useful insight into the effectiveness of our work methods as it allows us to see which measures and types of support offered to customers result in longer-term positive behaviour modification. Naturally, when we understand what works best, we can modify our practices and better utilise our internal resources to become more efficient with our work over time.
Q: Esther, lastly. If we look at last year’s reporting, the numbers show a slow yet steady decrease. Where are we going from here?
We will keep our focus on further automation of our processes. This will improve both the case detection volume as well as the timeliness of follow-up intervention. The more automated our processes are the quicker we can identify customers who may exhibit at-risk behaviour and the more promptly we can react to mitigate gambling-related harm. Again, this technology development is only possible through the excellent collaboration of our colleagues in all departments – their commitment is inspiring and contributes so much towards achieving our common goal.
Thank you so much Esther for guiding us through the development of the share of revenue from harmful gambling in Q1 2023 .
You can find more information about our Journey towards Zero here.
