How Caesars Southern Indiana Dramatically Lowered their KYC/EDD Investigation Time from 8hrs to 45mins
Caesars Southern Indiana is a full service Casino offering live Poker, a Race and Sportsbook, 1,100 slot and video poker machines, a variety of Table games, as well as a private High limit area with Slots and Table Games. Other amenities include a 503 room hotel, showroom, numerous restaurants, and a golf course.
Highlights
Challenges
- Using outdated tools retrofitted from the banking industry, including Word and Excel forms
- Manually running searches and gathering data on individual players
- Creating endless amounts of folders to store data and player information
Solutions
- Centralizing all required AML resources into one platform
- Reducing several hours of onboarding time, training time, and data gathering and analysis
- Providing clean and well documented KYC / EDD reviews with a digitized approval process
Results
- Less than 6 hours of training with a Kinectify compliance expert
- Reduction of KYC / EDD review time from an average of 6-8 hours per review to 45 minutes
- Completely automated risk scoring across 150k players
Tonda Rector
Supervisor, Regulatory Compliance at Caesars S. Indiana
The Challenge
Caesars S. Indiana (CSI) needed a comprehensive AML platform designed for gaming to more efficiently manage its Title 31 and AML requirements. In the past, CSI used a collection of outdated tools common in the gaming industry for AML risk management and spent 6-8 hours per investigation with much of that time spent on information gathering across numerous systems.
CSI opened in 1998 and is operated by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), using the Caesars brand through a licensing agreement that maintains the Caesars name for 15 years with an optional 5 year extension.
Having spent years doing AML compliance, Caesars Regulatory Compliance Supervisor, Tonda Rector, fully expected to spend hours performing each KYC / EDD on higher risk players with the collection of outdated tools retrofitted from the banking industry, running individual manual searches on each player, and creating folders to store all the data collected. Recognizing the potential costs and resources this would take, EBCI turned to Kinectify to modernize CSI’s capabilities as it wanted a partner that could grow with its entire gaming portfolio as opposed to a single-point solution.
Kinectify met this challenge head on with its EDD/KYC features integrating third party data searches that would automatically add findings into the reviews, save and store documents into profiles and directly creating the report into the platform. Gone were the days of creating endless amounts of folders on players and storing them on computer drives or desktops and writing reports on word or excel forms.
“In my previous experience, each KYC / EDD investigation took 6-8 hours to complete in order to meet our regulatory requirements and stay compliant,” said Rector. “This was not sustainable if we wanted to grow as an organization.”
The Solution
Tonda Rector
Supervisor, Regulatory Compliance at Caesars S. Indiana
Kinectify automated much of the AML investigation process and streamlined the workflow. Through data provider integrations in Kinectify CSI expanded its research capabilities globally across 60+ languages with real-time data on over 6 billion people and 300 million companies. Kinectify’s platform provided a modern and clean user experience centralizing all relevant data and automating risk scoring across over 500,000 players.
EBCI quickly learned that partnering with Kinectify drastically reduced the amount of time CSI staff needed to spend on data gathering and analysis. Their assigned Kinectify account manager has decades of gaming compliance experience, reducing onboarding and training time and providing excellent ongoing service allowing CSI to fully understand and take advantage of product features.
Kinectify led the CSI team through the implementation process and conducted thorough quality testing to ensure a successful launch with minimal bugs or issues. Once the Kinectify solution was live, the KYC / EDD research process was immediately automated via integrations with premiere data providers, eliminating the need for the CSI team to scour google, various databases, and data providers for information. Kinectify’s data gathering capabilities and workflows saved CSI over 7 hours per investigation and provided clean and well documented KYC / EDD reviews with a digitized approval process.
“Our relationship with Kinectify has brought enormous value to our team,” said Rector. “The Kinectify user-interface is intuitive easy to use. It saves my team hours of work on integrations and workflows for each KYC review as we assess regulatory actions, watchlists, litigation, media, and other factors that present a risk to our organization.”
Kinectify’s Player Profiles include sophisticated risk scoring of all players that is automated in real-time, giving CSI risk scoring standardization and clear visibility into low, medium, and high risk players across their entire active player database. This allows them to offload their manual risk scoring processes and more efficiently focus their compliance efforts on smaller sets of higher risk players. “Due to Kinectify’s intimate understanding of AML compliance in gaming, the company was able to design a system truly configured for the gaming industry that provides capabilities and efficiencies traditionally unseen in gaming compliance,” added Rector.
The Result
CSI reduced AML investigation time from 6-8hrs to 45min and completely automated player risk scoring across over 500,000 players. In less than 6 hours of training, the CSI team was proficient in all functionality across the platform resulting in immediate efficiency gains.
The new KYC / EDD capabilities Kinectify facilitates also greatly expanded CSI’s compliance program by granting it access to international datasets and net worth information previously unavailable. Kinectify’s partnerships with premiere data providers like DDIQ and WealthEngine provide CSI with information on over 6 billion individuals and 300 million companies in over 60 languages worldwide, as well as net worth estimations on 40 million individuals in the US.
Having Kinectify in place to drive efficiency and expanded capabilities for AML compliance brought peace of mind to the CSI executive team. “Looking back, we are delighted we selected Kinectify to increase CSI’s efficiency and capabilities for AML compliance,” said Scott Barber, CEO of EBCI Holdings. “By providing our organization with clear visibility on AML compliance, the EBCI leadership team is now confident that their AML resources are being appropriately and effectively managed.”
Caesars S. Indiana will be rolling out transaction monitoring and SAR filing in Kinectify in late 2022 driving even more efficiency and centralization to its AML compliance program through the Kinectify platform.
