ComeOn Group has now twice received action from the Netherlands Gambling Authority, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), over the past two weeks.
The KSA has issued a notice to Tulipa Ent Limited, which offers iGaming in the Netherlands under the ComeOn and GetLucky brand names, for violations of the Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing (Prevention) Act (Wwft).
This is now the second time ComeOn has been mentioned by the authority in as many weeks, as the company’s Godwits Limited was criticised for its “poor customer service accessibility” present following the market reentry of evoke’s 888 brand back in July.
‘Inadequate’ customer due diligence
In a statement, the KSA said that its investigation into Tulipa’s operations discovered that its customer due diligence is “inadequate” as “risk classifications are not applied correctly” and transactions and players’ money origin were monitored insufficiently.
The authority also claimed that unusual transaction reports were not properly documented by Tulipa with the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) and as such, its compliance with its reporting obligation couldn’t be properly assessed.
The statement read: “The KSA has reminded Tulipa that after submitting a report to the FIU-Netherlands, a reporting party has 24 hours to receive the PDF containing all the reporting information. This PDF complies with the Wwft registration requirements in this regard.”
Lastly, the KSA stated that Wwft training was not tailored correctly to various employee levels, in particular those working in compliance and the Money Laundering Reporting Officer.
What’s next?
The violations set out by the KSA must now be addressed by Tulipa within the next two and six months, depending on the violation.
However, the authority did note that it received cooperation from Tulipa throughout its investigation and that a remediation plan was proactively developed. Some violations were already addressed during the investigation, including those linked to policy and procedures as well as the reporting of unusual transactions.
Once the deadline has passed, a follow-up inspection will be conducted by the KSA.
iGaming Expert has reached out to ComeOn Group for comment on the notice issued to Tulipa from the KSA.
Warning
ComeOn’s Godwits received a warning from the KSA last week for “poor customer service accessibility” when 888, which it operates in the Netherlands, made its return to the market earlier this year.
The KSA stated that there was “an exceptionally high number of reports from players indicating that customer service was unavailable or difficult to reach”, with welcome bonuses also not automatically being awarded.
A Dutch-language customer service option must be available from any operator that is licensed in the Netherlands in order to meet duty of care standards for that group of players if they ever were to reach out with questions or concerns about their gambling behaviour.
Godwits said the number of requests it received in its customer service live chat when the 888 website launched was higher than expected, resulting in long wait times. Measures have been taken to address this, including additional customer service representative hirings.
One of the main reasons for so many customer service inquiries was due to a welcome bonus technical issue, as some players were not awarded their bonus after making the required account deposit.
Players were able to receive the bonus once they contacted customer service, while several reports about the issue were received by the KSA. Godwits has since resolved the technical issue.
iGaming Expert has reached out to evoke and ComeOn Group for comment on the warning Godwits received from the KSA.
