The UK Gambling Commission has teamed up with Malta’s Gaming Authority to better regulate its gambling sector through a Memorandum of Understanding.
The agreement will see both regulators exchange information and intelligence to build up better consumer safeguarding measures, curb criminal behaviour and combat the rise of gambling harm.
Andrew Rhodes, UKGC CEO, lauded the agreement, stating: “We welcome this agreement as a sign of our continued collaboration between the MGA and the UKGC. We’ve been working closely for some time now, and following our successful visit this summer, it is only fitting that we formulate our working relationship.
“We are keen to continue strengthening our efforts to raise standards across the industry, tackling common challenges such as illegal gambling, while also exploring future collaboration, including initiatives like shadowing and addressing key issues in areas like AML and sports betting integrity.”
By sharing best practices through the partnership, the UK and Maltese regulators will aim to strengthen their respective regulatory frameworks and address common challenges more efficiently.
Charles Mizzi, CEO of MGA, added: “Our longstanding informal collaboration with the UKGC has already delivered meaningful outcomes, and the formalisation of this cooperation is definitely a step in the right direction.
“In line with our regulatory objectives, we are confident that such collaboration will allow us to address common challenges more effectively, allowing us to continuously improve on the effectiveness of our processes and framework.”
The move sees the UKGC further strengthen its abilities to combat gambling harm, after the Commission recently laid out plans to reduce black market activity with a strategy to target black market operations.
Pinpointing some of the key methods that will form part of the strategy, the UKGC highlighted the impact of “URLs being removed from search results, choking off payments and stopping games and products being accessible on illegal sites”.