Outgoing Alderney regulatory chairman hopes for more harmonisation

After fourteen years in the chair at the Alderney Gambling Control Commission international online gambling regulator, John Godfrey penned his last report this month, airing his concerns on the lack of harmonisation among the growing number of national regulators.

Godfrey is handing over to Lord Faulkner, who will be supported by Christopher Moger QC as a new Commissioner on the board.

“In my report last year I referred to some of the risks of overlapping regulation as different national regulators seek to control eGambling businesses at both the point of consumption and where those businesses are operated,” Godfrey commented.

“The subsequent twelve months have shown that my concerns were well founded. Politicians have persuaded themselves that their citizens can only be protected if their national regulator duplicates the efforts of other regulators.”

He points out that as a consequence, high quality operators offering safe, secure and well regulated services will be required to meet the differing requirements of every country in which they do business and to submit to the bureaucratic intervention of every one of them.

“The costs and frustrations imposed on the operators will divert management from more useful tasks while the confusion of responsibility between regulators, petty differences of detail and the failure to adopt common standards in addressing the main issues will add little to the protection of customers,” he predicted.

Godfrey opined that there are many other businesses, which also carry risks for consumers, that have evolved to recognise international standards that apply throughout all or most of the world and eGambling will eventually do the same.

“But, for the moment, regulators are locked into mind-sets formed by the historic regulation of terrestrial gambling,” he laments.