Muradyan: More Regulation Does Not Mean Better Regulation

Digitain is making compliance work an important part of its international growth strategy as it enters regulated markets. In an interview with iGamingExpress at SiGMA Rome, Group Chief Compliance Officer Arshak Muradyan described the challenges of entering jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, Ontario, Denmark and South Africa.

Muradyan said it would not be accurate to call any single jurisdiction the most difficult, as each country tests a different part of the company. Even so, he pointed to the United Kingdom as the strongest benchmark. In his view, the difficulty lies not in a single requirement but in the maturity of the regulatory environment and in the expectation that compliance is consistently reflected in technology, operations, governance and player protection. Ontario's distinct regulatory model and local conditions were a separate test, while Denmark's very high technical and compliance expectations and South Africa's different structure were also assessed separately.

According to Muradyan, obtaining approval is often not the hardest part. The real test begins after approval. When entering a new market, the initial excitement centres on the launch, but it quickly becomes clear that the central question is whether the operation can be run this way every day and for many years. For this reason, he stressed that regulatory expansion cannot be treated as a series of licence applications alone. A licence is a beginning, not an end. Regulatory requirements must become part of the product, the processes and daily decisions.

Muradyan said a single compliance model cannot simply be copied from one country to another. He explained that governance, integrity, risk management, AML controls, responsible gaming principles and accountability should remain the same across the group, while the implementation layer must be adapted to each jurisdiction. He also added that building separate processes for each market makes every new market more complex than the last.