The London-based player protection and standards body eCOGRA has undergone a change in ownership following a successful management buy-out (MBO) initiative led by chief executive Andrew Beveridge.

The organisation announced this week that the original Founding Members of eCOGRA, three major and competing online gambling groups, had agreed to the change. In future the new ownership structure of eCOGRA would not include software or other service providers or operators enabling it to be truly independent in the discharge of its audit, advisory, compliance and seal awarding activities.

The Founding Members note that the company had established itself as a credible and respected industry player with major business connections since its launch in 2003, and that it is now appropriate that the founding ties be severed, allowing eCOGRA to make its own way in the world of online gambling.

Staffed by IT, responsible gambling and audit specialists, eCOGRA offers a wide range of professional business services to internet gambling companies, and enjoys business relationships with major trade associations and several international licensing jurisdictions.

The company’s Safe and Fair seal of accreditation has become a reliable indicator of operators committed to high standards of commercial conduct, customer respect and fair gaming, and is held by 150 websites, belonging to some of the most successful tier one companies in the industry.

"The industry is maturing, and eCOGRA must be part of that evolving process," Beveridge said this week. "The trend toward national or state regulatory regimes around the world is just one of the areas in which our professional services are increasingly in demand by companies and jurisdictions committed to ensuring that they are well prepared in all respects to meet the highest international standards."

Beveridge revealed that eCOGRA’s services and operational structure would remain largely unchanged.

"We will continue to offer unbiased player dispute mediation through our Fair Gaming Advocate, and our TGTR outcomes-based software monitoring system is proving increasingly popular with non-accredited entities and will if anything be expanded," he said.

"Our policy of independently assessing operators for the award of the Safe and Fair seal, and subsequent review and monitoring activity, will remain in place, and the provision of professional business services and advisory consulting remains a key element in our commercial offering and will become an increasing important part of the services offered.

"Importantly, our strong commitment to responsible gambling will continue, specifically in our operator training initiatives and the requirements enshrined in our standards."

"Going forward eCOGRA intends to become a major force in helping shape new gaming regulations, offering specialised advice and assistance to existing and emerging jurisdictions and be at the forefront of establishing industry standards".

The MBO has scored an important coup in bringing eCOGRA’s former Independent Directors onto the new Board.

"Our chairman will be Michael Hirst OBE, supported by a directorate that includes Bill Henbrey, Bill Galston OBE, Frank Catania and myself," said Beveridge, adding that biographies were available on the eCOGRA website at http://www.ecogra.org

"We are very fortunate that these highly experienced and respected figures in the industry will continue to make their considerable knowledge and business expertise available to us," he said.

Michael Hirst said that the original mandate of the eCOGRA Independent Directors had been to continually improve the credibility of the industry, ensure players were properly protected and develop appropriate standards and regulations.

"Those basic principles will remain our goal in addition to increased competitive commercial activity," he said.

Fair Gaming Advocate’s latest report shows that disputes per accredited operator remain impressively low.

The independent player protection and standards body eCOGRA has released its latest report on remote gambling disputes handled by the organisation’s Fair Gaming Advocate, showing remarkably low levels of player disputes at online gambling sites (Dispute Statistics) bearing the eCOGRA Safe and Fair seal of accreditation.

Online gambling sites bearing the seal are the subject to constant monitoring and annual inspections and reviews by the London-based non-profit organisation, now in its seventh year of operations. One of the requirements for accreditation is an operator’s commitment to work with eCOGRA in the event of player disputes.

Fair Gaming Advocate Tex Rees reports that over the first half of 2010 there were a total of 376 complaints submitted to eCOGRA, 33 of which were at non-accredited operations over which eCOGRA has no influence, and therefore cannot mediate. A further 56 of the complaints were declared invalid due to insufficient detail, irrelevance, abuse or anonymous origin.

The remaining 287 disputes – 76 percent of the total received – were resolved by the Fair Gaming Advocate normally within 48 hours, with 47 percent settled in favour of the player.

“These numbers are similar, and in fact compare favourably with last year’s numbers, despite the fact that eCOGRA now has 11 more accredited venues than last year,” Rees reports. “We have actually seen a decrease in dispute mediation requests.

“We can attribute a portion of this drop in disputes to the fact that we have now been working with many of the Seal operations for several years and as a consequence a number of policies and procedures have been developed that translate to less cause for disputes. Our operators are also better equipped and motivated to deal with disputes at the operator level, which results in eCOGRA receiving fewer complaints.”

Rees detailed Cash-in (43 percent), Bonus issues (21 percent) and Locked Accounts (21 percent) as the principal causes for dispute, with the number of cash-in complaints easing from last year’s 51 percent.

“We dealt with an average of 11.03 disputes a week in the first half of 2010,” Rees revealed, adding that this represented an average dispute rate per Seal operation per month of 0.34 disputes – slightly lower than last year’s 0.37 disputes.

“This level of performance is satisfactory and well within the standards we have set for our operators,” she commented. “Viewed against the very high number of transactions these well established, tier one online gambling venues experience on a daily basis, the number of disputes continues to be remarkably low.”