Crucial Compliance COO Andy Masters: “We Understand How to Interlace Responsible Gambling with What Customers Need”

In a world of quickly growing regulatory challenges, having the right experts to depend on is essential to make your business succeed. Crucial Compliance is one of those partners that any sustainable and trusted gaming and betting business should seek out when trying to establish an offer that appeals to customers but also toes an ever-growing number of tightening regulatory demands. 

All is well when brands set out to protect their customers, and Crucial Compliance can lead partners through the mesh of regulation charting a way to a successful business model that weathers anything, from industries re-regulation to specific new norms. We have had the opportunity to talk to Crucial Compliance COO Andy Masters and find out more about how the company helps partners achieve just that. 

Why did you join Crucial?

Personally, having a shared and understood vision for a compliance business with Paul Foster, coupled with the unequivocal trust and the opportunity to build a robust and game-changing business, was why I agreed to join the business as a partner.  

Since then, we have put together a world-class board with Nigel Birrell and Wes Taylor to ensure that the business challenges itself whilst staying true to the course of creating tier-one solutions and consultancy for the benefit of both players and operators globally.

What was your first major challenge?

Having spent over two decades in marketing, database management, and analytics, I understand the motivation of customers very well. The learning curve was understanding how to interlace Responsible Gambling and Compliance principles into that knowledge and then build a team around those two, sometimes in opposition objectives, something I think a lot of operators struggled within the early days. 

At Crucial, we have found the middle ground which serves both areas well and, in some cases, each genuinely complements the other. However, they have to be very well executed and not just a bolt-on to normal communications.

What was your first major success?

That’s two-fold, really; first, we were able to attract the right people into the business from a development perspective. People who understood the vision and then created the right software solutions within our flagship product: Crucial Player Protection.  

I am remarkably proud of that work by the team, and having it live and operational within an operator’s infrastructure as soon as it was ready to ship, again proved the journey that Crucial is on is the right one. Given its development path, I don’t see a real competitor in the marketplace now or likely in the future.

The second is the environment within Crucial HQ. Paul and I are building an environment where our staff can flourish and feel happy, even in these difficult times. Our team members are valued individually as well as within a highly focused, collaborative team. It’s not only why we are successful in meeting our clients’ needs but also in the creation of our compliance solutions.

Where is Crucial today? 

When I joined, there were only three of us, and now after six months, we now have a team of twenty and an office in Dublin.  

We have completed our first M&A deal, which we feel is the next level when it comes to compliance, and we will be talking about that in detail over the coming months. For me, though, the real pride is in the team and the fact that we have active clients for all the solutions we have built in the last six months, some achievement, I think, for the whole company in such a short space.

What does the future hold for Crucial?

More of the same! The business is focused on changing the gaming industry one operator at a time, and this is certainly the case. Compliance and RG are ever-changing and not always served well, even by those within it for no other reason is that there is a shortage of the kind of solutions and experience we have within Crucial. We will be continuing to challenge both ourselves and the industry in that regard.

We have invested in solutions, people, processes, and consultancy to ensure that any operator, be they established or new entrants, fear neither the cost nor acquiring the skills to do it right, and we will continue that level of investment and pace.

The landscape is ever-changing, not just locally in Gibraltar but globally, and we intend to help terraform RG, Compliance, and AML in those emerging markets whilst building a solid trust base within clients. This is what separates Crucial Compliance from largely any other business in this space.