Scale of services, reach of coverage, and depth of professional team are all key elements to the global and regional strength of Gaming Laboratories International LLC (GLI), said Richard Howarth, the firm’s chief business officer – APAC (Asia-Pacific), in an interview with GGRAsia.
A key point is “our scale and our reach,” observed Mr Howarth (pictured). “Although the Asia-Pacific region is incredibly diverse and is really going through a lot of areas of growth, we have a scale of business and colleagues around the world that can help with any opportunity or challenge that may lie ahead,” he added.
He was speaking to GGRAsia at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025 casino industry trade show and conference in Macau in early May.
GLI is a gaming technology compliance tester and security consultancy, which also provides training, strategic regulatory advice, and specialist assistance with cybersecurity.
In Asia specifically, “we’ve grown our team to meet the needs of the market,” stated Mr Howarth.
“We’ve got a brilliant head of systems engineering, Babu Gnanasekar,” who’s been with the company “for a little over a year now,” he added.
Mr Howarth stated: “He’s tasked with growing the team, mentoring our systems team and ensuring our systems team provides the best services for our clients.”
“I’d also like to point to Paulo Batalha Da Silva, who has joined our Macau office” as regulatory development manager, added the executive.
With the pace of “activity going on with regulators, we thought it’s really important to get a very experienced person to be within our Macau office, who can go out and see regulators” across the region.
This is, said Mr Howarth, in order to “understand the requirements and needs of the different regulators directly, across the APAC region”.
Thailand, Philippines
The APAC executive noted that within Asia, “Thailand is forming a regulatory body,” in advance of possible land-based casino business legalisation.
In the Philippines, the national regulator for casinos and gaming, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (Pagcor), is “going through some developments where we can go in, help them and also lean on our global expertise – our 36-year now history – of dealing with incredibly diverse jurisdictions and countries,” stated Mr Howarth.
Whether working with mature markets, or new markets looking to form regulatory bodies, “we can provide those advisory services,” said the executive.
The GLI chief business officer for APAC also commented on the role of “smart tables” in the live-casino sector.
Mr Howarth said: “Technology is always making changes within the wagering category. We’re fortunate enough to have really smart engineers that know how to stay in front of that technology. In fact, our engineering team has written many white papers on it,” and “keep evolving our GLI Standards with that technology in mind”.
The company notes that while each jurisdiction has the authority to set its own standards, many use GLI Standards as a starting point in developing their regulations.
GLI Standards are, stated Mr Howarth, “universal… they have been adopted by jurisdictions worldwide, and they are available for free download on our website”.
Onward from that point, there are various degrees of “uniqueness to each jurisdiction and regulator, relative to what the regulator wants to put in place,” added the GLI executive.
For iGaming, “our testing capabilities have grown immensely,” he observed. “We have customers… based, for example, in Melbourne, Australia looking for ways to get into various international markets,” and that want to address “how they can get certified to those markets and the regulatory challenges they may face”.
In terms of other regional work of GLI, Mr Howarth noted: “We are strong in the area of systems and systems testing,” an area that has “grown significantly in our Sydney lab”.
He added: “We’ve really built that resource in particular out of Sydney, Australia… and we continue to grow that area of our business in the region.”
