What prompted you to move from the employed world to running your own business, Kirsty?
I’d been in betting and gaming my whole career, starting as a Customer Service Advisor for William Hill – that was quite an education! I stayed with them through to becoming their Head of (online) Compliance and saw the overarching compliance function grow from two to over 70. After over 12 years with William Hill, I was headhunted to work at a well-funded start-up company, in which we set up the compliance framework from scratch. That was a great role and I learned a lot about building a business.
During that time, I was getting more and more contact from recruiters, and it felt like there were going to be opportunities to use the experience I’d gained more productively than just being employed. And Betsmart Consulting was born!
It must have been difficult in the beginning, with little to no experience of running a business? I know I found it tough in the early days.
Yes, starting in 2019 just before Covid-19, there were certainly challenges, although as I’d hoped, there was plenty of work coming in to make the cash flow element a little less scary. I tended to start with longer-term projects, which brought some stability.
It wasn’t long before it was obviously time to expand, and I brought on my first team member in early 2021. We now have 10 individuals working in various roles within the company with a varying workload.
There are a huge number of operators out there across online betting and gaming...they have enough challenges in their day-to-day business without having to keep on top of a dynamic regulatory landscape
Entrepreneur to entrepreneur, that’s a pretty amazing growth curve, where is all the business coming from?
I think betting and gaming compliance is a perfect example of an area where ‘what you know’ can be particularly valuable. There are a huge number of operators out there across online betting and gaming, casinos, bingo, arcades and so on, and they have enough challenges in their day-to-day business without having to keep on top of a dynamic regulatory landscape. We can offer them the ability to get up to date via anything from a short training refresher to a full audit, a customer compliance journey overhaul, or full-time resource cover for senior compliance roles. Using our services can be more cost effective and less of a commitment than having to beef up a compliance team with full timers, as well as the added bonus of having expert, independent oversight of the internal compliance framework. We also do a lot of work with ‘RegTech’ providers, helping them develop products to support the gambling industry with things like risk management and player protection.
One thing I saw was your Prepsmart Licensing product. What’s that about ?
We’ve found that in some cases, local licensing authorities need support as well. Licensing Officers have to deal with a tonne of different areas, from Taxi Licencing to Dangerous Animal Licensing and everything in between, so expecting them to be bang up to date on a moving target like the LCCP is asking a lot. We can help them stay current with just what they need to know, as well as provide support through drafting of gambling policy and training of council members.
It does feel like a win/win, helping operators to stay compliant and helping their local authority make sure they’re scrutinising the right things. Given that the fundamental objective for everyone is to keep people safe, the more easily operators and authorities can be in the know, the better the end result for everyone.
On the operational side, presumably you’re able to help operators before it all starts to go wrong, right? The Compliance equivalent of planned preventative maintenance?
Absolutely, we call it Prepsmart Evaluation. Prepsmart Evaluation was the first set of packages services we developed and remains our most popular offering. Essentially mirroring a regulatory assessment, it is designed to help operators prepare for those very formal and challenging sessions, as well as being used by many of our clients on a six monthly or annual basis to assess the practical implementation of their policies and procedures. Having so much personal experience of working as an in-house Head of Compliance, I know all too well how hard it can be to really ‘see the wood from the trees’ in terms of ongoing process effectiveness and implementation accuracy and so having the outside view from people who are conducting these type of reviews with different operators on an almost weekly basis is invaluable.
Betsmart Consulting look to be a company in the right place at the right time, and it’s clear from meeting Kirsty that she’s passionate about the industry and knows the field. Personally, I’m always happy to see bootstrapped entrepreneurs make a go of it in betting and gaming, and I think we’ll see plenty more of these guys in the years to come.
