AUSTRAC ANNOUNCES A FOCUS ON AML COMPLIANCE IN NSW CLUBS
In a recent Australian Financial Review article the new AUSTRAC Chief Executive, Brandan Thomas, confirmed his departments plan to “crackdown on the laundering of dirty money” and target “the estimated $70 billion fed into poker machines in NSW clubs each year”.
“We’re having a look at the clubs sector in a much more focused way,” Mr Thomas said in his first interview since beginning a five-year term in January. “They’re quite substantial with lots of money flowing.”
This follows on from recent investigations into AML/CTF issues in Australian casinos and international bookmakers such as Bet35 for failing to comply with AML/CTF laws.
Keeping track of instances of AML in clubs is difficult but Sint’s CashTrax compliance tool can actively assist and becomes a powerful business tool for managers and gaming floor staff in clubs and hotels. Most gaming systems can only highlight triggers when players are carded or use a general and non-specific trigger to identify non-carded play. Sint’s CashTrax for monitoring cash anomalies, and PlayTrax for harmful gaming behavioural patterns, can monitor both carded and non-carded play and is integrated with your gaming and operational systems.
CASHTRAX – AML TRANSACTION MONITORING, DETECTION AND REPORTING
CashTrax is an AML transaction monitoring, detection and reporting software tool using an AI based machine-learning process that analyses suspicious gaming activity and irregular player behaviours that deviate from an accepted baseline, and reports against a venue threshold measurement.
In simple terms, you set up an initial benchmark for player spending behaviours in your club, combined with OLGR thresholds, and the system learns and develops to the point where it can differentiate between ‘normal’ and ‘irregular’ behaviours. That means no more pages and pages of false reports are flagged that take up time and resource costs to investigate.
CashTrax then collates and compiles all irregular transactional data and reports, which enables easy access for further investigation and reporting if required. And, you know that they are all true suspicious activities, not false positives.
CashTrax can also operate within your Notify Me paging system from Sint or integrated into your existing paging system, gaming systems and other operational systems.
Notifications and alerts can be directed to managers via paging, SMS, or email, with documentation of the incident being entered live and uploaded to the venues preferred operational reporting platform.
NEW PLAY TRAX – HARM MINIMISATION TOOL
Sint’s new PlayTrax gambling behaviour tracking tool is designed to assist with gaming machine-based alerts so that RGOs don’t miss what can often be minimally visible signs of escalating problem gambling behaviour.
PlayTrax, works independently from your gaming system, and uses a pre-determined play algorithm to determine gaming behavioural benchmarks. It takes the guesswork out of this critical aspect by providing gaming machine alerts to identify:
- Carded / non-carded time at the machine.
- Carded accumulated time at multiple machines.
- Carded / non-carded one-off loss percentage.
- Risk based alerts – amber / red levels.
- Alerts notified through pager, app or email.
A large Sydney-based club (200+ machines) already using PlayTrax and with RGO’s on their gaming floor ahead of the regulation change, proved that the PlayTrax machine driven alerts assist the RGO’s by monitoring patterns and thresholds of gaming play that are often not visible while moving around the floor. In fact, the club had 78 accurate alerts through PlayTrax in one day last weekend, many that were missed by the RGOs.
Both the club’s management team, and the RGOs, were surprised at the number of accurate PlayTrax alerts they received based on what they thought they were observing manually.
For this club and their RGOs, Playtrax proved it wasn’t just software; it was an efficient working tool to support the RGOs in doing their job accurately.
Find our more about CashTrax and PlayTrax…
Call Jason Drew at Sint Group – Phone: 1300 175 994
