VENUES CAN’T PATCH THEIR WAY TO BETTER AML COMPLIANCE
AML compliance is due for a fundamental upgrade. Compliance expectations across gaming in the region are accelerating, and the systems most venues rely on were designed for gaming operations, member management and reporting, not AML programs. The results turn into manual processes that create gaps where risk continues to go undetected.
Brendan Thomas, AUSTRAC’s CEO, reinforced the urgency recently at the Regulating the Game conference in Sydney. What they are finding across the sector, as he described, are, “recurring patterns, systemic weaknesses that criminals exploited repeatedly and often for long periods.”
When the weaknesses are systemic, patching the current approach won’t resolve them.
After more than twenty years across the operator and vendor sides of gaming in this market, I have watched this compounding quietly. Requirements keep stacking, manual effort keeps growing, and staff are stretched to the point where the actual work of assessing and managing risk becomes the risk.
That should matter to every venue leader.
And that reality is what led me to Kinectify. Joseph Martin, founder and CEO, spent years doing AML investigation work inside US casinos. He recognised the state of compliance infrastructure was a systems design issue, and the path forward required rethinking that design from the ground up.
It requires a systematic approach to how risk is identified, monitored, and managed across the venue. One that works across the systems already in place rather than adding another disconnected layer on top.
This approach, and what Kinectify has built, aligns with everything I’ve seen this market need, and where I believe it needs to go. Risk does not sit neatly in static reports. It moves through transactions, customer behaviour, host interactions, and cash activity in real time. Compliance requires infrastructure that moves at the same pace.
The case for modernising how venues approach AML infrastructure has never been clearer. Obligations are not slowing down, and expectations are not getting simpler.
What’s needed is a connected layer that sits across the venue, sees the full picture, and closes the gaps that continue to be exploited across disconnected systems.
Joseph Martin recently shared more about what modernisation looks like in practice, gaps it’s closed in AML programs, and outcomes. I’d encourage every reader here to take a look.
Craig Butler
Managing Director ANZ
0406 423 981
