Reviewed payouts are a relatively new but important feature that online casinos are offering to help secure player confidence and trust.

The most prominent reviewing agency in the online casino business is PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the world's largest professional services firms.

PwC currently provides review services to more than thirty online casinos, through working agreements with Swedish casinos software supplier Boss Media and South African-based MicroGaming Systems.

To find out more about this important aspect of the internet gambling business, we spoke with Jacques Louw, Director of Global Risk Management Solutions at PwC. Mr. Louw is involved in reviewss of The Gaming Club and other MicroGaming casinos.

How does PwC calculate the payout percentages? Do they accurately reflect the percentage amount being paid back to players?

We calculate the percentage winnings to wagered amounts, and not the amounts paid back to clients. This means that the same dollar could be played through a number of times and only then be "re-called" by players. We are very confident that our calculations as published are correct.

Do these reviewed figures assure players that the casino's bookkeeping is honest?

We have been very careful not to imply that we perform any review of the casinos or their financial results. However, we have performed various detailed reviews of casino backoffices, and have no reason to believe that any dishonesty exists. I want to assure you that my firm will resign immediately should there be any sign of dishonesty by any of our clients. Our reputation is worth much more than any fees any client could pay us.

Are there ways casinos could alter the numbers without PwC's knowledge? Is this likely?

We download gigabytes of data every month and run our own software against these files to calculate the published ratios. We also perform various other checks, for example, we reconcile independent financial information to these data log file figures in order to ensure that our figures are independently confirmed. Casinos are unable to manipulate these numbers without PwC's knowledge. We also perform this exercise for 38 casinos and have built up significant knowledge of the data, and trends that will alarm us immediately should anything be wrong.

Can you give me any other general info about the reviews?

We use very senior and experienced people only to perform this work (partner time on this exceeds 50%). We have performed various random number tests on the software, and are very satisfied with the level of cooperation we receive from MicroGaming Systems. I want to stress that we will not hesitate to keep reports back if there is any hint that everything is not above board.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a multi-national corporation employing more than 160,000 people in over 150 countries, providing services in 24 different market sectors.

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