RiskSmart is proud to announce the Hippodrome Casino as its newest customer in the gaming and gambling industry. As the latest casino to join the RiskSmart family, we spoke to Matt Harding, Director of Assurance at the Hippodrome, to get more insight into why RiskSmart was their preferred software of choice, and why it’s more important than ever for the gambling sector to seek tech that will keep them compliant.
The history of the Hippodrome Casino goes way beyond its elegant Grade II listed building at the heart of Leicester Square. Throughout the years, the location has hosted legends like Charlie Chaplin, Harry Houdini, Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey and Prince’s last performance in London.
After a £50m renovation and grand re-opening in 2012, it was transformed into a luxurious new era casino, with the Hippodrome team working to redefine what a casino can be: it’s not just purely a focus on gambling, but general world-class entertainment, whether people come to play, for a show or for a lavish dinner.
When Matt Harding was brought on as Director of Assurance earlier this year, it was a further demonstration of the casino’s commitment to keep exceeding regulatory standards and shift their risk and compliance management from a reactive to a proactive approach.
“We’re an industry-leading casino that welcomes 1.6 million customers through the door every year. Historically, our governance structures weren’t as robust as they could be,” he explains. “We were always doing what was expected of us by the regulator, but without having the solid framework to evidence and continuously improve our processes.”
Designing an assurance roadmap, running thematic reviews, and proactively identifying risks before they reach regulators isn’t a task for the faint-hearted, especially in an industry facing more scrutiny and change than ever before from regulators. It meant moving away from spreadsheets and manual processes, towards a modern GRC platform that could scale with the business, which was a key step to achieving this.
The search for tech that could help them build these foundations led them to RiskSmart.
After months of a competitive review process with several tools, Matt and the Hippodrome team landed on RiskSmart. What sold the risk management tool to them in the end wasn’t necessarily just technical features, but the collaborative and human approach we take to everything we do.
Working with RiskSmart, the team came to appreciate the adaptability, scalability and user-centric focus of not just the tech, but the people building and running it.
“It felt like we’d have a voice. With larger vendors, we’d have been a small fish in a big pond. With RiskSmart, we can grow together.” Explains Matt.
RiskSmart is the GRC platform that focuses on simplifying and streamlining GRC. Focusing on user-friendly UI and endless options for customisations, it gives evolving organisations like Hippodrome Casino the ability to scale and evolve their frameworks without compromise, independently and confidently.
“We are an industry-leading casino and entertainment venue,” says Matt. “And that means we need to have an industry-leading compliance and assurance function. RiskSmart is helping us get there.”