Good morning, and welcome everyone, to those here in North Ryde in Sydney at our corporate head office, and to those who've joined us on the webcast. Thanks very much for your participation and interest in Aristocrat at this busy time of the year. My name is James Coghill. I am the General Manager of Investor Relations here at Aristocrat. I'd like to remind everyone that this presentation is being webcast, and we'll upload a copy of it onto our investor relations website after the event. Okay, now, that is the usual disclaimer statement in the presentation pack, so please note that, and we can turn quickly to the safety briefing. I can put your minds at rest and say this is the most complicated slide that we will share with you today.
So all you need to know is that if there is a fire event, out the doors at the back, and you can turn right, and there'll be some staff on hand to assist you should we do have to evacuate. So before we begin, I'm pleased to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land upon which we meet today, the Wallumattagal clan of the Eora people, and we pay our respects to elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of this land, and the important role that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continue to play within our communities. We extend that respect to all Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander peoples present here today. So the art on this slide is the work of a talented Aristocrat employee, Michelle Nolan.
She also has a magnificent painting displayed in our cafeteria a few floors above us here. Michelle has Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi heritage. We thank Michelle generously for sharing this work with us today. With that, I'm pleased to introduce Neil Chatfield, the Chairman of the Aristocrat Board, to open our session today. Over to you, Chairman.
Thanks very much, James, and good morning, everyone. I'd also like to offer my welcome both to those with us in the room today and to those joining us on the webcast. Today's session is the first of its kind in Aristocrat. We've of course been on a journey and active in meeting you and sharing information on our ESG priorities and progress over the last few years. We've also been integrating these updates progressively into our periodic market communications, in addition to our detailed annual disclosures.
That said, we've been listening closely to feedback and suggestions from investors and other stakeholders who are keen for a deeper dive into these issues, with a high level of interest in responsible gameplay, corporate governance, risk management, and our, importantly, our ability to continue to implement our growth strategy. We are conscious also of the need for investors to be well-informed of ESG progress at their portfolio companies. We've published our annual sustainability disclosures on our website last Friday. I do really encourage everyone to review those disclosures, and they contain a wealth of information and increasingly more data that tracks our progress and deeper insights in response to your feedback.
I can tell you from a board perspective, we are heavily invested in building and maintaining our ESG framework, and we apply the same governance approach as you would see across other regulated aspects of our business, for example, safety or privacy. Today's session provides a timely opportunity to hear directly from some of the people involved in driving our sustainability agenda across our global business. It's a chance to get more detail. It's a chance to ask questions, and for those in the room, to experience a number of live responsible gameplay demonstrations, which will be run in the breakout area, as the area that you came in. So you can actually experience those activities, and that'll be occurring during the morning tea break. We also hope it underlies the fact that sustainability Aristocrat is a whole of company endeavor.
It's very much governed by and linked to our enterprise risk management framework, and we apply as much rigor and effort on these issues as we do on other important business issues. So this is a new initiative, and we're going to welcome your feedback as we continue to refine and improve not only our the substantive sustainability efforts, but also how better we can communicate to all stakeholders, and particularly those in the capital markets. So with that, I'm delighted to pass to Trevor Croker, our CEO and Managing Director, and he'll take us through a bit more to detail today. Thanks very much.
Well, thank you, Neil, for joining us today. I'd also like to acknowledge the participation of another non-executive director, Bill Lance, later in the program. The Aristocrat board has been a very strong supporter of investing in and maturing our sustainability program over the last few years. The global nature of our industry means that there are varying levels of ESG and pace of evolution in the different geographies and market segments in which we play.
...At Aristocrat, our strategy is to strive for long-term sustainability in all markets in which we choose to participate, by bringing consistently high ESG standards to each segment. We have a people-first, mindset at Aristocrat, so I want to take a moment to acknowledge those of our people around the world that have been impacted by armed conflict this year, most notably in Ukraine and more recently in Israel. Aristocrat will continue to do what we can to support our people and their, and their wellbeing at what is a very volatile and distressing time in the world. Aristocrat's global operations continue to grow in breadth and diversity every year. I won't go through the detail of the financial results...
I won't go through the detail of our financial results, which we discussed only a couple of weeks ago, but I thought I would share a few key dimensions of our business, particularly for those less familiar with us, around our geographies, our staff members, and our revenue split as an organization. What's perhaps less obvious from this slide is our long-term approach. For many years, we've focused on building our fundamental competitiveness, so that we can deliver exceptional growth, long-term performance, exceptional and long-term performance, notwithstanding external conditions or challenges, and recently there've been plenty of those, as you would know. What this means practically is that we have prioritized strong and sustainable organic investment in great product, people, and technology to set the foundations of our competitiveness.
We've also diversified our operations through acquisitive growth, deploying capital into businesses that offer alternative distribution channels for our high-performing game content. This diversification has further added to our business resilience over time. We're also very focused on delivering excellence in execution and investing in strong relationships. This includes building trust with regulators and forging long-term customer partnerships. It also means fostering a culture of accountability and compliance, and being prepared to take a leadership role in areas where we believe it's in the long-term interests of our people, our partners, shareholders, and stakeholders. Therefore, I hope it makes sense that when I say Aristocrat agenda fits hand in glove with our business strategy and with the culture of our DNA in our organization. That's why I believe we've made such material steps forward in recent years, as initiatives have come to life across our global business.
I'll now step through our agenda, introduce our presenters, and comment on logistics for the day. We'll begin with some context on our sustainability journey before a deep dive into our approach and progress in promoting responsible gameplay. We'll then pause for Q&A and take a refreshment break before reassembling to hear more on climate action and our anti-modern slavery agenda. We'll then invite more questions before we head into our final set of presentations on tribal customer engagement, diversity and inclusion, and cyber security. We'll then wrap up the day with more questions and some final comments. I'm pleased to introduce to you today the presenters. These presenters have been involved in delivering the progress and topics they are speaking to, and they come from a mix of business units, functions, regions, and levels across the organization, to give you an informed view of our perspectives.
As I mentioned, there will be three opportunities for your questions later today. People in the room can raise their hand, and we'll ensure you receive a microphone. For those online, please submit your questions to the Q&A feature, and our team will read them out at an opportune time. We'll have a 30-minute break for refreshments and a live demonstration for those here in the room, starting at 10:15 A.M. Sydney time. There's no need to hang up for those that are on the line and joined or have joined by webcast. You're welcome to leave the webcast open, and we'll resume at 10:45 sharp for the second part of the day. I'd also like to make a comment on the issues we've chosen to focus on today.
Our time together is limited, and we're not able to address every important sustainability issue in today's agenda. You may notice that we've not included governance as a standalone topic. We also have not addressed workplace health and safety, quality, and a number of other topics that we consider vital and at which we work on every day in our business. I wanna stress that this does not mean that these issues are not a priority for us. Far from it. Rather, the issues our team will present on today reflect those that our market stakeholders are most interested in, and based off feedback and questions we've received from investors over the past 12-24 months.
I would also add the information on all of these issues are included in our recently released sustainability disclosures for 2023, and we welcome questions on any issues and any other sustainability topics today. With that, I'll now pass to Natalie Toohey, our Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, to provide an overview of our journey before introducing the first session. Thank you.
Thank you, Trevor. Thanks, Neil. Welcome, everybody. I'd like to start by summarizing our approach and our philosophy at Aristocrat to sustainability. Informally, we've been investing in topics like responsible gameplay and community giving for many years, around more, in fact, than a decade. But our formal program is around four years old. Over that time, we've been focused on increasing our maturity and bringing more ambition and impact to what we're doing. And certainly, we've been listening very closely to investors in terms of wanting more detail, more data, and where relevant, more targets, as well as wanting better quality disclosures over time. And we've been driving hard to deliver progress against each of these areas and improving what we do every year.
From a very fundamental philosophical point of view, we really believe that sustainability activity must be owned by the business, and that's why we are largely focused in our activity on embedding improvements in core business processes. Whether that's how we assess risk, set strategy, attract and reward staff, how we partner with commercial partners, or how we develop and market products, they're the processes, and those are the places where you'll really find sustainability living in our business. And we hope that today you'll get a better sense of this as you hear from a number of leaders who are executing these priorities across our organization. This slide summarizes the structure of our program, with three focus areas, as you can see, in product responsibility, business operations, and people and community.
Under each of these headings, we're really clear that on the issues that we're focused on, which are our most material sustainability issues. We're also clear on what our ambitions are, whether that's leading our industries in responsible gameplay, aligning with our ASX top 20 peers in climate action, or being a recognized employer of choice. These are the, the goals, the objectives that guide our efforts and allow us to build programs and metrics that encourage progress at the right pace and trajectory. As you will see from our disclosures, we have mapped our priorities to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, just for ease of navigation. Both Neil and Trevor referred to our 2023 sustainability disclosures, which were published last Friday, and they do provide a comprehensive account of the progress we've made in our agenda over the last 12 months.
The report also flags the areas where we feel we have more work to do. At a high level, I believe that our disclosures reflect an organization that's continuing to move up the maturity curve, both in terms of our sustainability activity and also our reporting. And I particularly hope readers will see a step change in the sophistication of our approach on climate issues, off the back of around two years of work, as we prepare to submit science-based emissions reduction targets for the organization. These targets were submitted in November this year, and we expect them to be validated in the first half of calendar 2024.
In responsible gameplay, you'll also note an evolution in our approach from a one-size-fits-all philosophy of action to a far more segmented view of player cohorts and a commitment to targeted approaches based on effectiveness and the particular opportunities that Aristocrat has to play a role and to make a contribution. These and other developments will be canvassed by our presenters today, and we hope you have plenty of questions and comments for us. As disclosure standards have converged under the International Sustainability Standards Board, Aristocrat recently took the opportunity to conduct a gap analysis of our disclosures against the first two standards, IFRS S1 and S2. I just wanted to confirm that we do intend to take steps to align with these standards and address gaps in our disclosures over the coming years as we continue to improve them.
Further to this, in financial 2024, we will also conduct a fresh Double Materiality Assessment to underpin the development of our new three-year sustainability strategy for the global organization. And this assessment is a key plank in our sustainability governance, which will help our program and our reporting remain relevant in what is a very fast-evolving environment. And we look forward to again inviting a number of our investors and market stakeholders to participate in that materiality assessment. With that, I'll welcome you all again. Thank you for your interest and time, and I'm very pleased to pass to my colleague, Tracey Elkerton, Chief Compliance Officer, to kick off our first session on responsible gameplay.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Natalie. I'm pleased to have the opportunity to begin today's deep dive with our highest sustainability leadership priority, which is responsible gameplay. As Natalie mentioned, I'm Aristocrat's Chief Compliance Officer, and I'm also a member of the executive leadership team. Also presenting with me today is Jordan Sirolis, our Assistant General Counsel, and Tassos Dakos, our General Manager of Responsible Gameplay. I've been leading the compliance function for over 25 years at Aristocrat, having left the banking industry in pursuit of what I thought was a less regulated industry. As I step through my presentation, you will see that I actually transferred into a far more highly regulated industry.
There is a very high degree of complexity across the jurisdictions we operate in, and the key aspect of our role in compliance is to identify relevant compliance obligations and risks and ensure that we have the right systems and processes in place to manage our compliance obligations. Over the past 25 years, I have certainly seen our compliance program and our compliance culture at Aristocrat evolve, and it has evolved into one that is purposeful, with sound controls in place and good governance. Our mandate in compliance is now very broad and includes licensing, gaming product compliance, and regulatory governance. At Aristocrat, compliance with regulatory obligations lies at the heart of our values and underpins our strategic focus. Comply is also the first pillar in our three-pillar approach to responsible gameplay, together with Empower and Improve, which Tassos and Joe will say more on shortly.
The gaming industry is generally governed through strict regulation of people and products to protect the integrity of the industry and the broader community. This is done through various means, including in-depth licensing requirements and strict enforcement of laws and regulations that hold gaming licensees to very high standards, particularly technical standards for product design. These requirements are a foundation of responsible gameplay, so that gaming products are designed to be fair and secure, and to minimize any potential for harm to players. The regulations and standards set down in each jurisdiction can vary widely in line with local culture, community expectations, political context, industry structure, and legal frameworks. Obligations are often complex, requiring experienced teams to ensure we have the right systems and processes in place for managing our obligations.
Over the next few minutes, I'd like to share some more about our gaming compliance program at Aristocrat and how compliance is embedded within our organization. Compliance is a group function at Aristocrat that that provides advice on gaming matters, establishes and monitors core policies and systems, manages our reporting obligations, while also being accountable for regulator engagement globally. Aristocrat's gaming and Anaxi businesses are licensed by 327 gaming authorities throughout the world, across 18 countries, allowing us to conduct our business in regulated markets in Australia, Asia, Latin America, the U.S., Canada, and many countries across Europe. We also operate in 85 countries that, where gaming is legal, and while regulators don't require us to hold a license, we have nevertheless implemented our compliance program across all of those businesses and those jurisdictions as well.
I'd now like to share a few key facts relating to our compliance program. 102, this is the number of employees in compliance globally at Aristocrat. 3,018 is the number of background checks we've performed in the last 12 months. Those background checks are performed on our customers, our employees, our vendors, our suppliers, and other third parties that we associate with. 637, excuse me. 637 is the number of company licenses we hold, and 1,211 is the number of licenses held by our directors and our executives. Another important figure for us is $46,500. This is the total value of fines imposed by gaming authorities throughout the world across the last 12 months, and this represents eight violations in total.
These fines are for minor infringements and generally relate to the rules associated with shipping our products across North America, which again, are very complex. The dollar value and number of fines incurred to date in 2023 is consistent with earlier years, even though the complexity of the rules associated with our products and shipping our products has increased substantially. We've not been issued any material violation notices in the last several years, and we're very proud of that. We don't always get it 100% right, and we're transparent about that. But we do use infringements to drive improvements in our processes and in our broader culture across the organization. Our gaming compliance program details responsibilities for managing our obligations and ensures compliance accountabilities are clearly understood.
Our program includes mature processes that have been implemented so that we comply with and demonstrate our commitment to complying with all relevant regulatory obligations and ethical behavior principles. These processes are applied consistently across our organization. Our program is overseen by the board's Regulatory and Compliance Committee, which is comprised of six non-executive directors, myself, and one independent member, who is a former chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. To expand on our program and the objectives of gaming authorities further, there are three elements which are key to our ability to meet our regulatory obligations and three elements that support our ongoing day-to-day operations. The first element relates to licensing. Licensing is an ongoing and rigorous process for many of our people, including our directors.
Employees required to hold gaming licenses must provide significant personal and financial information before they are able to commence their employment or their engagement with the company. As you can see from this slide, the personal information that our people need to share is quite extensive. The point of sharing this with you is to highlight the very high levels of accountability and transparency for both our directors and executives in this industry. The level of scrutiny is, in many instances, far more onerous and rigorous than other regulated industries, such as banks and insurance companies, which, at its heart, has protection of players and the community as its primary objective. The second element relates to suitability. Our compliance program focuses on understanding who we associate with.
We are required to conduct in-depth background checks on our key associates, which includes our employees, our customers, our vendors, I mentioned them before, our distributors, our agents, our M&A partners, and other third parties that we interact with. These checks often go deeper than typical KYC checks. They are complicated to conduct in different jurisdictions because of privacy laws. They are often expensive, and then they can take several weeks for us to conduct them. The third element relates to product technical standards. Product technical standards are the rules that our products must be designed against, and again, these vary by jurisdiction, meaning that it is a complex process to design a single game for deployment across multiple markets. Games often require significant localization before we can deploy them.
For example, Australian technical standards comprise hundreds of pages of detailed requirements for developing games, hardware, jackpots, systems, and other components, and they also contain many consumer protection measures. In addition to this, in a jurisdiction like New South Wales, there are appendices that include certain prohibited features. For example, banning characteristics of games like player inducement messages, simultaneous in-screen games, and non-linear pay tables. The general technical standard for North America for games alone is over 100 pages, and then other jurisdictions in the U.S. have their own appendixes on top as well. These technical requirements sit alongside multiple other laws and regulations that we're required to comply with, and these, again, are complex depending on the jurisdiction. Our gaming products undergo substantial internal testing before they are sent to independent testing laboratories.
These laboratories are often designated by the gaming regulators to test those products on their behalf against the local technical standards. In some cases, these regulatory authorities also conduct further independent testing before they'll issue an approval for us to release those products into the market. In addition to the three key elements I just outlined, being licensing, suitability, and technical standards, we have a number of other regulatory obligations that need to be complied with. For example, some jurisdictions have strict rules around how we can promote and sell our products, and other jurisdictions require us to seek approval in advance of all of our commercial arrangements. We also have ongoing disclosure and reporting obligations to gaming authorities for certain key events or developments that arise from time to time, and again, these vary by jurisdiction.
And if you think back to being licensed in 327 jurisdictions, that is 327 sets of different obligations across those jurisdictions. Other elements of Aristocrat's compliance program include a comprehensive anti-bribery and corruption program. We have just recently introduced a global sanctions framework, and we also have an AML framework in place. These frameworks are all key to our operations and form an integral part of our overall compliance program at Aristocrat, which itself is foundational to our responsible gameplay effort. This is probably a good segue to pass to Jo to make further comments on what we are doing in responsible gameplay over and above our extensive regulatory obligations. Thank you.
Thanks, Tracey. I'm the Assistant General Counsel here at Aristocrat. I work on corporate law matters, M&A, as well as assisting with other, key aspects of our responsible gameplay program, particularly from a governance perspective. Aristocrat has been investing in responsible gameplay features and product development in our regulated business for some time, certainly well before we ever used the term RG or responsible gameplay. In 2019, we formalized our approach for the first time, developing a comprehensive responsible gameplay program that is underpinned by the three pillars of comply, empower, and improve. As Tracey has just explained, comply means ensuring that we uphold all applicable laws, rules, and regulations in the jurisdictions in which we operate. Importantly, this is not only those external requirements, but also upholding our own internal policies and procedures.
Empower means educating and educating and empowering our players with sufficient information to make informed choices about their gameplay. This has been the central pillar of our approach since 2019. Improve means that we continuously challenge the way we operate. We look to innovate at the right pace, and as a result, lead the industry forward. We've gone from a history of very individualized efforts across our group, largely focused on the Australian gaming business, to a far more enterprise-wide approach. We now have a dedicated RG team who oversee the core of our whole program across our global business. Three years ago, we brought the gaming business outside of Australia into the mix. Thereafter, followed by our social casino business, and then the balance of our mobile business, and Anaxi.
So we now have appropriate policies that cover all of our business with actions and training focused on our biggest opportunities and risk management initiatives. As we've matured our program, in addition to leveraging our own experiences, we have proactively listened to customers, players, researchers, and treatment professionals. We've also undertaken formal assessments, such as audits, and sought the advice of independent experts on aspects of our program and improvement opportunities. We will touch on some of the lessons learned throughout the balance of this presentation and how we've incorporated them into our RG program, but for now, I'd like to highlight a few of the key features for you. These include, firstly, the expectation among stakeholders that Aristocrat will lead on responsible gameplay, and this is not in terms of what we think or what we say, but actually by doing....
by product innovation, technology trials, and investment in research. Secondly, the need to embed responsible gameplay into the core of our DNA. This relates to the need to create end-to-end governance, not only including creating policies, but also with tailored training, support for team leaders, ensuring that we have clear processes in place for non-compliance and escalation, so we can uphold what we are committed to in the core of our business operations. Thirdly, a need to provide more specific metrics around our responsible gameplay program, including our impacts, where possible. And finally, we have heard the need to communicate more about what we're doing in RG outside of the Australian gaming business.
It's also worth noting that our approach to responsible gameplay has evolved, and it will continue to evolve over time, not only to reflect our own experiences, but also emerging research, best practices, changes in technological advances, as well as the changing expectations of our stakeholders. Turning now to our sustainable gameplay model. I'd like to expand on more detail on how we empower players who play our games across our different business verticals. Back in 2019, the concept of informed choice was the primary element underpinning our responsible gameplay program, and we essentially assumed that this would be appropriate for all players. However, since then, we have started to take a far more holistic approach, taking into account where players sit across a risk behavioral spectrum, and then looking to adopt different languages, tools, and strategies that are most effective for each cohort.
On the left side of our sustainable gameplay model over here, we are focused on recreational players. That is, players who are in control, playing sustainably and in balance with other activities in their lives. For this cohort, the vast majority of our players, we see our role as bringing forward universal prevention measures, such as information on how EGMs work, information on game rules, and other resources to help keep these players playing sustainably and in control. This is where the philosophy of empowerment and informed choice is applicable and most relevant. Moving across the spectrum, we then consider those players who may be at risk of developing problems. This is where prevention strategies and tools are relevant. For example, tools to screen for problem behaviors, providing targeted education and information materials, and technology features such as the ability to quarantine winnings or set spend and time limitations.
These options can be perceived as stigmatizing, so careful messaging around these management tools is important to frame the benefits of them and encourage adoption and uptake. I'll return to this concept in a little bit shortly. For those players at the far end of the spectrum who are experiencing disordered gambling, the previous strategies are unlikely to be effective. Here, treatment is needed, and the experts tell us that gameplay must cease altogether. From an Aristocrat perspective, this is where our self-exclusion tools in our mobile gaming business are relevant, as our partnerships and donations to major research, counseling, and treatment organizations, which are aimed at addressing the needs of those individuals.
It's not just about what we do that is, goes to the effectiveness for different cohorts across this whole spectrum, but it's also the tone and the communication of the messaging that's important. For example, for the majority of players who are recreational players and not at risk, they tend to find traditional messages that are fear-based or negative around responsible gameplay disengaging. So that's messages around: "Stay in control," "Don't lose control," "Gamble responsibly." They don't think that these messages are aimed at them, and they are therefore less likely to engage with the message and adopt that. We have learned that more positively framed communication that inspires people to take action without the stigma can be more effective.
We will come to this in a moment more when we showcase some of our recent initiatives and how our responsible gameplay effort will continue to evolve moving forward. For now, I'd like to invite Tassos up to provide a summary of progress and initiatives across our RG program for 2023. I would like to remind you that this is just a flavor of what we've achieved over the last year, and for further and full information, I encourage you to read our recently released 2023 sustainability disclosures. Thanks, Tassos.
Thanks, Jordan and Tracey. Hello, everyone. My name is Tassos Dakos, and I lead our Global Responsible Gameplay team. I came into this role after leading our customer experience teams for two of our video game businesses, Product Madness and Big Fish Games. I was always very passionate to do everything we can to bring a positive experience for our players, and, of course, responsible gameplay is very important for that. When the opportunity came for us to, for me, to create, to help create responsible gameplay tools for, as part of the Global Responsible Gameplay team, of course, I joined in 2022, when we launched our dedicated responsible gameplay division for Pixel United.
So I'm very delighted to share with you some of our initiatives for fiscal year 2023, and starting, first of all, with those that are focusing on strengthening informed choice and offering universal prevention measures to encourage low-risk, enjoyable, recreational play. So, Joe mentioned this, our stakeholders asked us to do more in on responsible gameplay outside of our Australian gaming business. And while Australia will still be a great place for responsible gameplay innovation, when it comes to consumer marketing, Australia is a less flexible option given the constraints of the regulation. But that's not the case in the United States. So in the context of our partnership with the NFL, our Aristocrat Gaming team had the opportunity to create an innovative, responsible gameplay campaign with to a huge audience, with the goal of sparking awareness, engagement, and conversations.
So this is the Know Your Max campaign, which is its first of its kind, positive play campaign in the United States and developed by Aristocrat. It employs positive imagery and non-judgmental language because experience shows that these negatively framed messages don't resonate so well with players in the left part of the spectrum. So Know Your Max is running nationwide across the United States and includes a billboard in Las Vegas. So it has been quite a big success with a big exposure. More than 20 million impressions so far, which is exciting, exciting result for us. And we are very fortunate to have the team behind the Know Your Max campaign, who will be demonstrating and talking more during the breakout sessions.
All right, so let's talk more about how we informed our approach to responsible gameplay tools, and how do we know what players want to see? We commissioned in 2022 the International Gaming Institute (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) to undertake a survey for players of gaming machines. There were about 1,500 players across the U.S., Canada, and Australia who completed an online survey. And we commissioned this survey in order for us to understand more about our players' preferences when it comes to how we deliver responsible gameplay information and the tools that are more important for them.
So some of the findings we found, out of 10 preferred options, the two most popular ones, the ones who are allowed the players to set limits on the time and spending, and also FlexiPlay Bank feature was quite popular. Less popular were features that were part of a digital wallet, or those who required venues to be alerted for at-risk behavior. This information shows us that we need to do more in order to ease the functionality of these options and encourage players to use them. Players also favored receiving information about how to gamble responsibly and seeing their gaming activity and expenditure history, and they preferred this information to be shown in the device or in the machine, rather than being delivered by a member of staff.
So this sort of research helps us understand player preferences better, support informed customer conversations, and shapes our product and technology innovation and responsible gameplay. All right, let's talk more about some of our awareness activities, internal awareness activities for Aristocrat. Responsible gameplay is a core value for us at Aristocrat, and we are members and proud members of the American Gaming Association. Every year, they're hosting the Responsible Gaming Education Month, which this year celebrated the 25th anniversary. During the month, Aristocrat presented information sessions and activities to highlight the important role of our teams across the world on responsible gameplay.
We had Aristocrat leaders who connected with industry experts from the American Gaming Association, the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers, Oklahoma Association on Problem Gambling and Gaming, focusing on the year-round commitment on responsible gameplay, research, new technology, and highlighting the importance of positive play. We also took the opportunity to highlight our newest businesses', Anaxi commitment to responsible gameplay, and launched that Anaxi responsible gameplay task force team, that is focusing on regulated markets. For our video games business, mobile video games business, Pixel United, in December 2022, we had our first Responsible Gameplay Awareness Week, which was the first of its kind awareness activity for responsible gameplay for a mobile games company. There were some sessions that were attended by over 300 people live across our company.
A survey indicated that 88% of those participated found the event helpful, very helpful or relevant. We also launched the second Responsible Gameplay Awareness Week that completed just last month, focusing on the refreshed responsible gameplay policies for Pixel United. So these were just two of our awareness activities, internal educational activities for our people. Now we have a calendar full of responsible gameplay activities that put responsible gameplay in front of mind for our 7,800+ employees across the world. Continuing with our mobile gaming gaming company, Pixel United. Pixel United supported the creation of the Smart Mobile Gamers website, which is a very good resource for parents and players on the way to how to set up parental controls, tips on security and privacy, and information about how to manage in-app purchases.
In addition, our advocacy, we are long members of the International Social Games Association, which is our industry association, and we help them update the best practice principles, and our advocacy ensure that these principles are true best practice, and we backed it up by ensuring that we're able to meet these principles. In addition, as Joe mentioned, this responsible gameplay is a conversation. It keeps evolving, technology is evolving, and of course, we need to ensure that these principles remain relevant over time.... And also in December 2022, we Pixel United became a member of the Fair Play Alliance, which is a big family of over 250 gaming companies around the world, focusing on fostering healthy online communities and enhancing player interactions within our games.
All right, so let's move now to the middle part of the triangle, with some of our initiatives focusing on supporting control, particularly for those players who could become at risk or are already at risk, starting with our Prime Digital Wallet cashless solution trial in Australia. Aristocrat is very proud to have developed the first trial of its kind in Australia, and the nine-month trial at Wests Newcastle was across 144 gaming machines and concluded on thirtieth of June, 2023. The trial was overseen by the New South Wales Government Gaming Regulator, and they appointed an independent researcher, Professor Paul Delfabbro from the University of Adelaide, to develop the trial and assess its findings.
260 players participated, and the report from Professor Paul Delfabbro submitted to the regulator in September 2023. So what is it, Aristocrat's Prime Digital Wallet? It is a suite of new and sophisticated responsible gameplay tools. Players were able to set limits, view their player activity, and request self-exclusion, and all of this from their mobile device. So in the next slide, we see some information about the trial. This trial helped us understand a bit more about the preference for the players. We found out that 35%, very interesting, 35% of those participated requested to receive a statement of their activity following the trial.
Also, the trial reported that they generally avoided to responsible gameplay limit setting tools because they were already able to transfer funds into their gaming wallet. So some of the findings will help us develop the next version, which include improved member enrollment and player wallet enrollment, strengthen responsible gameplay features and options, improve and drive responsible gameplay and functionality adoption, improve the usability of the wallets, eliminate the need to enroll a new bank account in order to to use the functionality, and automate data collection for better insights and statistical purposes. So let's turn now to FlexiPlay. FlexiPlay is Aristocrat's EGM-based technology that allows players to manage their time and spending on the gaming machine.
So the two key features of FlexiPlay are the bank feature, which allows players to bank part of the winnings or any other part of the balance, and a timer that sends gentle reminders in order to control the time playing in the machine. So FlexiPlay 1.0 has been available in a relatively small capacity in Queensland and New South Wales. Preliminary data show us that the Wins Auto Bank feature is the most popular feature, used 10-30 times in its FlexiPlay-enabled machine. Informed by these learnings, FlexiPlay 2.0 has been developed, and some of the changes include FlexiPlay branding will be removed because it can be considered stigmatized, stigmatizing by some players.
Also, the information will be better integrated, as you can see on the screen, in the game menu, so they're more visible to players. And the rollout will be further expanded because from mid- to fiscal year 2024, it will be enabled in all new ANZ games families except from Victoria because of regulatory reasons. Aristocrat will support the rollout with engaging engagement communications to appropriately launch the FlexiPlay 2.0, and we will also put less cumbersome options or processes in place in order to gather meaningful data from the usage. All right, moving back to our mobile games business, Pixel United.
As you may have seen in our previous disclosures, we have been trialing a successful program of responsible gameplay messaging in our social casino business. So the first campaigns were launched in 2021 with proactive messages pointing players to information on how to control the gameplay and how to block themselves from the game for those who needed it. So the campaigns were run for all players every 6 months and included in-game messages, emails, and Facebook posts, and they have been quite successful. We had more than 20 million in-game messages and emails sent in 2021 when we first launched it, over 22 million in 2022, and by mid-October in 2023, we already had more than 80 million messages sent.
The social media campaign is quite successful too because 99% on average of the players interacting positive or reacting positively to these messages. So what we wanted to do next is to build on the success of this approach, and we wanted to see if we can have a more targeted approach, focusing on the players who are potentially at risk or could be already at risk. So what we did, we engaged with the data, internally data analysis team to review the player data we have obtained from the self-excluded players, players who have already selected, chosen to block themselves from our games. And our hypothesis was that we could identify characteristics that are relevant to the players who ultimately decide to block themselves from the game.
So these characteristics include, purchases, number of purchases, increased stakes per session, time and hour of playing, because it's different playing in the weekends at night versus weekdays during the days, increased spins per session, reaching out of chips flow, and meaning they have spun all the chips, and the use of the auto-spin feature. So what we did next, we tested this hypothesis with a cohort, a small cohort of players who showed the similar characteristics. The players engaged with these messages more, showed more interest in these messages than players who did not share the same characteristics.
So based on this, we launched a new way of delivering these responsible gameplay awareness messages to players, starting with a customer casino app in October 2023, and we are planning to roll this out to other social casino games in fiscal year 2024. Finally, I will move to some of the key initiatives in fiscal year 2023, which focused on supporting protection, contributing to treatment and research, and expanding self-exclusion options for people who need to stop gaming or gambling. Aristocrat continued to support partnerships with the Oregon Gambling Research Center, the Oklahoma Association on Problem Gambling and Gaming, the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling, the Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic at University of Sydney, and others.
And more specifically, on our funding to Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic is contributing to a better understanding about how gambling customers can develop risk or harms over time, and what resources or information are suitable for them. Also, the recently published 2022 Problem Gambling Prevalence Survey in Oklahoma was funded by Aristocrat through a donation to the Oklahoma Association on Problem Gambling and Gaming. Aristocrat was also approached by the New South Wales Government Gamble Aware counselors to better understand how gaming machines work, including the concepts of randomness, cashless technology, jackpot, and Return to Player. What we did on 31st of May 2023, we hosted 33 counselors for a half-day workshop in order to explain how—demonstrate how gaming machines work, discuss these concepts, and discuss also the importance of regulation and the role of the industry.
The education will support the valuable work that the clinicians provide to people with gambling disorders moving forward. Also for our Pixel United business, my mobile games business, players were initially given the information and tools in order to block themselves from the game for those who needed it as a permanent option. But based on the player insights in the understanding of player interests and also proprietary industry practices, we expanded this policy to offer players the ability to select a period of self-exclusion of their choice starting with one year of exclusion, because evidence suggests that giving more options to players can encourage them to make the choice easier.
So also, in addition, in fiscal year 2023, we expanded self-exclusion options to non-social casino games, and we have a more robust responsible gameplay support through our customer support teams. So this is a summary of a great year for us. I will pass back to Jo for an update, to close the session with an update on the governance improvements and our future priorities. So, Jo, and thank you very much.
Thanks, Tassos. As part of our efforts to further embed responsible gameplay into the core of our DNA, this year, we released updated and a stronger set of responsible gameplay policies. In September this year, we released an updated Aristocrat group-wide responsible gameplay policy to all permanent staff, including our board of directors. This policy is supplemented by additional and refreshed policies that apply to relevant teams. These policies include the Pixel United Loot Box Policy, the Pixel United Consumer Comms Policy, the Pixel United New Games Development Policy, our Product Development Charter for our regulated gaming business, and our Responsible Marketing Policy for our regulated business. Staff have been required to have read and acknowledged these policies, and tailored training will be rolled out in the coming months.
Our improved responsible gameplay policies contain: simple and clear processes for seeking prior approval, an escalation process if people are unsure or need further advice, greater clarity around mandatory provisions in the policies, procedures for tracking compliance, and processes for non-compliance and consequence management. These updated policies will also help us to report more data on our responsible gameplay program and performance over time. This work truly required strong cross-collaboration between many people and business functions across our global business. Again, highlighting how responsible gameplay is truly embedded into the core of our business and all corners of the business. Moving now to Board Responsible Gameplay Education Program. This year, we continued our enhanced board education program as part of its continuing professional development calendar. The full board of directors attended a problem gambling treatment center and heard from those with lived experiences with disordered gambling.
They also attended a separate session hosted by Dr. Michael Wohl, an international expert on disordered gambling, motivating behavior change and positive play, and Dr. Brett Abarbanel, an international expert on issues surrounding loot boxes. As previously referenced, responsible gameplay is fully integrated into our enterprise risk management framework and our corporate governance processes. As part of the board charter review this year, the directors determined that the full board should have responsibility for our ESG strategy and have oversight of the adequacy and effectiveness of our ESG program, and this includes responsible gameplay. So turning now to future priorities and a couple of comments in this regard. Aristocrat has been clear about its stated desire to be a leader in responsible gameplay.
In addition to what we're doing with Cashless 2.0 and FlexiPlay, we're looking to build a pipeline of responsible gameplay technology, including test and learn projects on early intervention technology where relevant. Our approach to RG has evolved, and it will continue to evolve. As you've heard today, we will be looking to pivot to the approach of positive play, whereby we focus from players right across the whole spectrum, and we continue to deliver the targeted approaches that we have previously explained throughout the presentation today. We're also looking to develop a suite of responsible gameplay metrics to steer the direction of our RG program and help us deliver on Aristocrat's leadership aspirations. This work is also partly in response to investor feedback about the need of metrics against which we will track our responsible gameplay program.
We will be bedding down governance improvements in policy, delivering ongoing tailored training, compliance checking, to continually refine and improve across the business. With respect to our pending NeoGames acquisition, post-close of that transaction, we'll be looking to learn what we can from NeoGames' RG program and their leadership in online real money gaming and folding them into our RG program, so taking the best of both worlds approach. We will also be refreshing our RG strategy in FY 2024, coming off the back of the materiality assessment that Natalie mentioned earlier. With that, I'll close the session on responsible gameplay and hand back to Natalie for Q&A. Thank you.
Thanks, Jo. Thanks, Tassos and Tracey. I'll be pleased to moderate today's Q&A, so please direct any questions on responsible gameplay to me in the first instance, and, and we can get some responses from the team. And I might start with questions in the room. If you just want to pop your hand up, and we'll make sure you get a microphone.
Hi. Super-
It's on now.
Yep. Hi. I lead the stewardship function at Aware Super. I've got a question just on the enhanced board education program and the sessions that you had with the subject matter experts.
Sure.
Just interested to hear a bit more about that.
Yeah, sure.
Some learnings and some reflections.
Sure. I mean, I'm happy to say a few words, and then, Jo, if you wanted to add anything. So we have a structured program, and we do take a kind of an annual view. So we look to make sure that we are inviting in experts and perspectives that give the board, you know, a year's worth of really relevant topics to consider. We consider the whole of the business, so as you heard, you know, people who are expert in aspects of mobile games, you know, practice, RG, et cetera, as well as the regulated products. And I think in terms of how I mean, high level, how I would characterize those sessions, really rigorous exchanges.
Really, we have a very curious board, I would say, that's very engaged and really keen to learn more. And the board's been incredibly, you know, embracing of the opportunities, to the extent of being very keen on visits to treatment centers, spending time with, for example, experts in treatment and also in research. So I'm not sure if that gives you a bit of color, but I think these are very much embraced opportunities. And the sort of feedback that we get and that the board hears helps us in the RG team to continue to iterate what we're doing based on, you know, feedback from experts, as well as our own experience, customer experience, player experience.
I think it also helps drive a really, really great kind of alignment, if you like, and synergy in terms of the encouragement that we're getting from our board as a team, as well as, you know, our program and how our program is developing. So it's. I think it's a great initiative and, like I say, very much embraced.
Kieran Halliday from Future Fund. I'm interested in how you manage the tension between developing games that are attractive, that have the right colors and sounds and themes that attract players, versus the work that you're doing on responsible gaming. I imagine there's a tension between those two sides of the coin.
Look, that's why we've got our policy frameworks. That's why we have guidelines around all of the key aspects of product development and how we run the business, is really to negotiate those tensions and make sure that we are providing the right guidelines, the right, the right guidance, and also backing it up with training, with compliance procedures, with escalation procedures, et cetera. So I think our policy framework, you know, crystallizes and provides clarity on a lot of that. But I would say at a very high level that, you know, we really genuinely don't see any conflict between being a growing business and being a business that's really active and serious in RG.
In fact, we think that it is complementary, because we do believe that the number of players in the player cohort across all of the product verticals, who are experiencing problems, is small, and we genuinely do believe that. So we see nothing but incentive for us to be active in making sure that people with problems get support, but also that we are really active in making sure that people who might be at risk are not tipping over into that column, but can stay in that majority of recreational positive players. So at a very high level, I guess, we don't see any contradiction between being a growing gaming business and being serious about RG.
We think it manages down risk, and we think that it's actually very complementary.
I have a second question, if I may. A lot of the presentation you spoke about initiatives that have started, sort of December 2022, started with a small sample. So the work that you're doing sounds excellent, but I'm trying to understand how progressed it really is in terms of the broader market that you're working in.
Yeah, great question. Thank you. So as I think we mentioned, the formal program is around about four years old. So some of the initiatives that you heard us speak about, we're up to iteration two or iteration three. So for example, the social casino messaging, we're now up to iteration three of that, so that's been over two and a half years that we've iterated. What I would say, and things like, you know, the original sort of EGM tool that we put into trial, set of tools, was more than 10 years ago.
So what I would say in this area, firstly, we are proud that we are leading, so we're not aware of any competitors, for example, in the mobile space, the social casino space, doing anything like what we are doing with proactive, you know, generationally iterating and improving the messaging program that we're delivering. Transparently reporting on the number of self-exclusions, for example, and continuing to build on that. So we believe we're leading. The other thing that I would say is progress takes time, particularly in the regulated businesses. We need approval from regulators, we need customer acceptance, we need to do the technical work, we need to get products to trial, we need to have them independently assessed, and then we need to digest and build on those insights to build the second generation.
So this is a fairly slow process of refining technology and product, particularly in the regulated business, but I would say that we are very active, and I would say that we are leading in our industries, and we plan to do more. We're certainly not stopping where we are. Any other questions in the room? On the line? James, please.
We've got a few that have come through the webcast here, Natalie, so I'll just read them as typed. "The majority of players are in the recreational category, but do you have any estimates on the percentage of players in the at-risk and disordered categories, please?
Sure. Great, great question. So, first thing I would say is, we would expect that this varies by product type. So for example, in our mobile business, I mean, we don't have, you know, a full view, but what I would say is we have some data points that we can use as a bit of a proxy, however imperfect. Things like, for example, the number of self-exclusions, which we report in the social casino business, would be an example. Very low compared to the whole of the cohort, and that's a very good thing. That's our experience, and that's a data point. I would say in terms of the regulated business or businesses, again, it's going to vary a lot.
One of the difficulties that we do encounter when people ask us for a number is each jurisdiction defines disordered or at-risk gaming differently. New South Wales has a different criteria to Victoria, for example. So it very much depends on jurisdictions, it depends on definitions, it depends on product type. So it is highly variable. I think we did cite a study one of the previous times we spoke to investors on these issues. It was a gaming, it was an online RMG study from Europe, and that's determined that there was a disordered rate of somewhere around 1%-2%. I'm looking at Harry for this. Yes. So that's a data point.
We can give you data points, but, you know, I think what I would say at high level is we believe that those numbers are low in the context of the full cohorts. But rather than spend a lot of time trying to get to the answer on the number, we feel as a supplier and an industry leader, that our best efforts and our work and attention really just needs to be on what can we do, whether the number's 1%, 0%, you know, 3%, what can we do to make sure that there are tools and strategies that address that and continue to drive that number down? So I would say that's really our focus. Any other questions from the line?
Yeah, we've got another one here. "Are there any empirical studies available on links between voluntary responsible gaming initiatives, such as the ones that, that we are trialing, and reduced prevalence of problem gaming?
... Sure.
In other words, question seems to want to know whether we are measuring the impact of some of our gaming initiatives or whether there are any studies that have looked at that?
Yes. Yeah. So again, I would probably... Where we are in a B2C context, for example, in our mobile games, we do have, and we can, when we have disclosed, and again, point you to the 2023 disclosures for the latest information. But we do see direct, you know, consumer reaction to our responsible gameplay messaging, you know, to the initiatives that, and the new tools. I mean, we directly can track, and we share how many people have taken up, you know, various tools and options. And so we definitely see, I guess, the outcome from a consumer reaction point of view. In our regulated business, it's a bit different because we're not B2C, obviously, and it's harder to kind of track that directly.
I would say that part of the purpose of the trials, and we do have a history of investing in trials that are supported by regulators and independently assessed, is to start to get some clues as to precisely that. What are consumers, what do players use, don't use? What are their attitudes? What works? How can technology and tools be improved? So that's what I'd say on that one.
Next question. Great.
Thanks. Thanks, Javmes. Natalie, good morning.
Hi.
Rohan Gallagher, Jarden. Joe, morning, Joe, mentioned about this is an extensive program, but you are investing in things like UNLV, University of Sydney. I believe this year you did a donation to Oklahoma, et cetera. How much do you actually spend on investing to, you know, manage appropriate gambling on a per annum basis?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Rowan. Look, that's not a number that we disclose, but what I would say is that it's a whole of business effort. It's not only donations, and I guess they're the more obviously quantifiable, but it's actually the day-to-day work of the hundreds of people through the organization who are developing products, running trials, talking to customers, developing new tools in the mobile business. As well as the funding of our global center of excellence in terms of our global RG team, which has grown in recent years. So look, we feel like it is generally a whole of business lift and, you know, it, it's not something that...
Yeah, we don't kind of reduce it to this many dollars or that many dollars.
Thanks. We have a second follow-up question, if I may, Natalie.
Yeah.
Probably skewed towards Tracey. Good morning, Tracey. How does the compliance risks of the business change with NeoGames you push into real money gaming from a compliance regulatory perspective? I know I would argue you're probably the gold standard in compliance relationships with all the regulators around the world, but could you sort of unpack that and what extra lift will be required from a compliance perspective going forward?
Yeah. Yeah, happy... I might just say a couple of things, then pass to you, Tracey.
Sure.
I do think that, you know, you're, you're right. I think we've got really, really advanced processes, and also more than that, kind of culture and capability in compliance. You know, we've obviously thoroughly assessed this business, and we feel very ready to take it on and run it very well to our standard. I would also just mention, though, that, you know, personally, I'm looking forward to also learning from them, certainly in the RG space. I think we will, we'll also have the opportunity to, as I think Joe said, get the best of both worlds and, and also learn. But, Tracey, do you want to say a little bit more on compliance?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Rowan. So we are very well prepared for this transaction. I would say we have just recently made a fairly senior hire of a senior executive who came to us with 16 years' experience in online RMG, came from a competitor. But prior to that, he also had experience at Nevada Gaming Control Board, so he also brings a regulatory background to that role. He has been instrumental in helping us navigate our due diligence on Neo, particularly from a compliance perspective. The one thing I would call out is most of the regulators are generally the same in an RMG space as they are in the land-based space, so we already have well-established relationships with those regulators. RMG essentially is a different product, another product that we would be taking before those regulators.
I will say it is new for us. We've not been in the RMG space previously, so there's a lot for us to learn. However, I'm confident that we've got the right team in place to help us navigate that together with the Neo compliance team that's in place today.
Thank you. Thanks, Tracey. Thanks for the questions, everybody. We are now going to take a short break for refreshments and to give the participants here in the room with us today the opportunity to experience our responsible gameplay booths. For the benefit of those in the room, the three experience booths are as follows: Know Your Max, which is staffed by Mark Wadley and Jamie Helmick from our Aristocrat Gaming marketing team; our Pixel United Nothing But Fun booth, which is staffed by Harry Ashton and Tassos, whom you know well now from our group responsible gameplay team; and also our FlexiPlay booth, which is staffed by Todd Solomon from our Aristocrat Gaming D&D organization. So for those in the room, please feel free to grab a refreshment as you make your way to the booths.
For those on the line, there's no need to log off and log back on. You're welcome to stay on the line while we pause the webcast, and we will restart at 10:45 A.M. Sydney time sharp. With that, we'll take a pause. Thank you.
Okay, we're gonna get started again.
So good morning, everyone. My name is Deanne McKissick, and I'm the Chief Supply Chain Officer for Aristocrat Gaming, and I'm here with my colleague, Harry Ashton, Group General Manager of Responsibility for Aristocrat, to talk to you about our climate agenda. Before we get into those details, I'd like to share a little bit about myself and the Aristocrat Gaming global supply chain. I've been with Aristocrat for eight years, and I'm based in Las Vegas. The global supply chain team consists of approximately 700 employees focused on sourcing, planning, manufacturing, and delivery of electronic gaming machines. We have 4 integration centers around the world, located in Sydney, Las Vegas, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Barcelona. Now, back to our scheduled topic.
I'd like to acknowledge that climate is a relatively new focus for us, and, but it's an area in which we have made real progress over the last couple of years. We only started disclosing information on our emissions footprint in 2019. This was based on our sustainability materiality assessment at the time, which categorized climate action as low in terms of priority. This, in turn, reflected the fact that our business was not particularly carbon-intensive, and also that we had relatively low-level stakeholder interest in the topic, including among investors, but also our suppliers, customers, governments, and our own people.
Turning to the next slide, which demonstrates our historical approach to reporting, from 2019 through 2022, Aristocrat provided only a partial snapshot of our emissions footprint in terms of reporting, including use of company vehicles, electricity, waste at our Sydney, Las Vegas, and Tulsa integration centers, purchased freight transportation services, business travel, and car rental days. Regarding Scope 3, we collected some partial data on freight transportation, business travel, and waste at our major facilities. Importantly, we did not collect any emissions data concerning our suppliers or customers. These were material gaps in our understanding. So we are coming from a history of incomplete data capture and therefore very limited emissions disclosures. We also had no targets and no real internal abatement program.
Pleasingly, this has now changed off of the back of almost two years of investment and detailed work across our global organization, and I'm proud to share some of our progress. Importantly, we have now accounted for our full greenhouse gas inventory for financial year 2022, which you can see on the next slide. The green boxes refer to the scopes and categories that we had previously partially disclosed and represented the full extent of our carbon disclosures. The yellow categories were incorporated into our greenhouse gas inventory, creating a holistic picture of our carbon footprint for fiscal year 2022. The gray boxes were assessed as outside of our reporting boundary. It has been an eventful and busy journey.
Since our commitment to set science-based targets, or SBT, which we communicated in late 2021, we have not only built data infrastructure and captured and analyzed our emissions profile, but also set draft targets and submitted those to SBTi, as Natalie previously referenced. We've also structured an internal abatement plan team, and this will allow us to provide focus, resourcing, and government oversight to deliver in the improvements we're targeting and report on our progress in a comprehensive way. Over the past year, consistent with SBTi rules, we've expanded our focus to include all physical locations where our company conducts business, and we've identified all relevant datasets and captured or estimated all Scope 1, 2, and 3 data for financial year 2022.
Through this rigorous effort across Group, we have collected and audited Aristocrat's emissions to arrive at what we believe is a comprehensive and robust 2022 base year, which Harry will address shortly. For consistency and integrity of data, we have documented all data sources, emissions calculations methods, and our estimation approach and assumptions to support our disclosure. We are confident that these processes support reliability and repeatability and facilitate future data integrity and reporting. In line with the Paris Agreement and consistent with SBTi rules, Aristocrat aims to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees and reduce our Scope 3 emissions to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees. In this vein, we proposed and submitted the following targets to SBTi last month.
We do want to be absolutely clear that the SBTi has not yet approved our proposed targets, and we fully respect that the targets may change in response to their questions and feedback. However, in order to have a meaningful discussion today, we are sharing our proposed targets as follows: reducing absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 54.6% by 2033 off of our 2022 base year. Reducing absolute Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions from all categories by 32.5% by 2033 off of a 2022 base year. Reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions across the value chain by 2050, and reducing absolute Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050 from a 2022 base year.
Of course, Aristocrat will confirm these targets when these targets are ultimately approved by SBTi once we reach that milestone. I'd now like to pass to Harry Ashton to speak more on our abatement plans and next steps.
Thank you, Deanne, and hello, everyone. It's good to see you. Thank you for coming along today. I think I know quite a few of you already. My name's Harry Ashton. I lead our global sustainability program here at Aristocrat. Really proud to be able to present today. So just leading on from, from Deanne, we started work a few months ago on our multi-year abatement effort, and it became apparent to us straight away that this was gonna be a challenging effort. But during the process, we also saw that, you know, we had staff coming forward that were passionate about this, and so it's become a rewarding effort as well for us. When we came together, we came up with a number of decarbonization levers that were prioritized, and this was out of 100 abatement ideas.
Where we landed was 12 key abatement areas that we'd identified, and these were: fleet management, physical plant and leased assets, supplier engagement, customer engagement, renewable energy procurement, product design, product packaging, transportation management, waste management in operations, waste management in facilities, and then two extra ones of data automation and governance and policy. Looking forward, and in summary, it's fair to say that our focus areas will be on fleet decarbonization for Scope 1, renewable energy procurement for Scope 2, and then customer and supplier engagement for, for categories 11 and 1, respectively. For Scope 3, categories 11 and 1 account for 57% and 22% of our greenhouse gas inventory. This is sold products and purchased goods and services. Therefore, engagement with customers and suppliers is where the heavy lift needs to occur.
So sizing and prioritizing the customer and supplier engagement opportunities is going to be key, and the first task is building out data sets to track which customers and suppliers have either got a science-based target or other, emissions reduction targets, or even using renewable energy, and this will be done through our customer and supplier surveys. It's clear that many of our suppliers and customers are already taking action, which is a good thing. This will help us to deliver our own abatement plan, as we will accrue Scope 3 emissions reductions in our value chain as a result of both customers' and supplier targets for Scopes 1 and 2.
Noting that we only need to get to 32.5% reduction by 2033, we feel that once we've done this exercise, that we'll be well and truly on the journey, once we've collected that data from customers and suppliers. More and more customers are taking action, particularly corporate customers, but we do acknowledge that it's a tough task. It's gonna be tough for smaller operators, and progress won't be uniform. Where customers haven't taken a similar approach to us, what we're going to do is incorporate product design into our abatement plan. A new project group has been established, aimed at optimizing energy efficiency and using lighter components in the design and construction of our cabinets.
This is part of a holistic assessment of abatement actions across our value, value chain, including design, packaging, transportation, waste management, which fall under our 12 work streams. On the supplier side, as you can see on the slide, our 2023 survey revealed that we've already got 45 out of our out of 126 key suppliers that have either committed to a science-based target or have an emissions reduction target, and this is up from 35 out of a 108 in 2022, in FY 2022. Just a couple of words on governance as well. Over two years, we've really learned about the criticality of data, whether that be from quality, repeatability, auditability of data. They all point to how important our processes need to be, and that's why we've established a data capability function within the implementation team.
This team will be responsible for data collection, integrity, process, automation, as well as any changes that will be required under SBTi guidance. This team will perform data quality checks. They'll audit for accuracy and do any recalculations if required under the SBTi rules. We've also established a project management team and governance infrastructure to track and deliver our decarbonization efforts and support robust reporting and future assurance requirements. Importantly, this is a priority enterprise project that has executive support and board oversight. We'll establish a governance committee to ingest policy recommendations coming out of the work streams and build the right policy framework for the business. There'll be policy training, there'll be communications plans, awareness activities, and assessing compliance with our policy framework will be key. Now a few words on the road ahead.
We expect to receive validation or endorsement of our targets in the first half of calendar 2024, after which we'll have 10 years to deliver the near-term target with a mid-term target review, if necessary, and there may need to be recalculation and revalidation at that point. We'll need to do that every 5 years. We'll then have until 2050 to deliver the long-term net zero target. We'll disclose further details on our targets and abatement activities once the SBTi validates our targets in the coming months. Just a short comment on NeoGames. We may need to recalculate our base year upon completion of the NeoGames acquisition.
Under the SBTi rules, if there's a five percent or greater increase in our baseline as a result of acquisitions, this prompts a need for recalculation, and more work will be required for us to determine that. In summary, of all of our priorities across the year, I think it's fair to say that our progress on carbon emissions is probably the one area where we've had the most dramatic improvement across the group in the past 12-24 months. We've been really encouraged by the feedback that we've received from many of the people here in the room on this, in terms of our approach, and we'll welcome further feedback, not only on this, but on our broader sustainability program. As Deanne mentioned, we've moved from a fragmented ad hoc approach to reporting something which is much more rigorous.
It's company-wide, it's aligned to current and future expectations of our stakeholders. Just a note on mandatory disclosures. Going forward, we do have an eye on the mandatory climate-related financial disclosure framework that's been proposed in Australia. This work that we've described today will put us in a strong position. Because if it becomes law, there's gonna be a requirement for us to disclose our emissions data in our financial reporting, and this will be from FY 2025. With that, I'll conclude my remarks and pass to Anne Tucker to discuss the Anti-Modern Slavery program. Thanks, Anne.
Thanks, Harry. I'm Anne Tucker, Deputy Chief Legal Officer at Aristocrat, based here in Sydney, and I'm pleased today to say a few words on our anti-modern slavery efforts. So while we've been reporting under the UK Modern Slavery legislation since 2017, Aristocrat is about four years on our formal Anti-Modern Slavery program. Over that time, we've been on a trajectory of steadily building, understanding, awareness, capability, engagement, and governance. And I'll just spend a few moments taking you through some of what we've been working on over the last four years. In 2020, we began work to better understand our gaming supply chain, developing our first iteration of supplier surveys. We also published our first joint UK and Australian Modern Slavery Statement.
In 2021, we rolled out general awareness training for our Aristocrat staff, and importantly, we developed our anti-modern slavery strategy, which is now embedded in our operations. In 2022, we hosted our inaugural Global Anti-Modern Slavery Summit, involving guest presentations from our major suppliers and key leaders from across our global business. We also published an updated Supplier Code of Conduct, encompassing our modern slavery obligations, as well as our expectations for our suppliers. Over the past year, we've further extended our education efforts, introducing more focused risk-based training, particularly tailored towards our supplier-facing and people and culture teams, being the teams who might have greater exposure to or visibility of potential modern slavery risks in our supply chain and operations. We've also developed more refined supplier assessment processes and tools, and we've expanded mapping of our supply chain to include our sub-tier suppliers.
Our redefined supplier surveys and audits have provided data points which will enable us to, among other things, prioritize specific suppliers who present the most risk in our supply chain. We've continued to improve our public reporting, too. Our 2021 and 2022 statements received A ratings from Monash University. This followed a C rating for our 2020 report, reflecting an improvement in the quality of our disclosures. We've steadily expanded the focus of our program, not only externally, but also internally. Our program now includes Pixel United, and we've begun to include our Anaxi business as well. This will accelerate with the expected integration of NeoGames and our growth in online RMG in the coming years. Better understanding of our global supply chain and operations has been critical to our progress.
The more we understand, the more we can tailor our efforts and reach the people we most need to engage. On this slide, we set out some key facts and observations on our supply chain, which will hopefully help put some of our efforts in context. Our supply chain is large, truly global and complex, with over 100 direct suppliers across 25 countries. The map on screen shows where our major suppliers are located and the country's prevalence of modern slavery based on Walk Free's 2023 data. For those countries with the higher level of risk, Armenia, Cyprus, Romania, and Ukraine, these suppliers are part of our digital supply chain. Most of these suppliers provide mobile game development services, noting that we also saw some computer equipment and software services in Ukraine. Our gaming supply chain doesn't currently have any suppliers in high-risk countries.
However, we do engage suppliers from countries with a medium level of risk, including China, Mexico, Thailand, and Vietnam. But beyond geographic risk, we also consider other risks, including industry, sector and product, and working condition risks. More details can be found in our annual Modern Slavery Statement, available on the Aristocrat website. On this final slide, it just sets out some data and some brief snippets, which hopefully gives you a sense of the progress that we've made in FY 2023, a couple of which I'll call out. Firstly, completion rates for compulsory staff training are improving, with 97.7% of staff across our global business completing our mandatory training. Secondly, in FY 2023, we began conducting modern slavery supplier audits, completing 5 across the course of the year.
These audits help us to proactively identify risks within our supply chain, and we're working with external human rights consultants to uplift our internal capabilities for conducting these audits. And so finally, what's next? In FY 2024 and beyond, we'll continue to work with and support our suppliers to create action plans to address findings from our modern slavery surveys and recent audits. Continuous improvement will remain our focus, both for our program and our disclosures, including continuing to explore ways to better measure and demonstrate the effectiveness of our program. This is something we're seeking your feedback on, as well as thoughts and advice from our suppliers. With that, I'll hand back to Natalie to facilitate Q&A.
Thanks, Anne, and thanks to Deanne and Harry as well. And with that, I'm pleased to invite any questions. Let's start in the room on climate action and anti-modern slavery.
You mentioned that there were five supplier audits. How many suppliers are there? So what proportion have been audited?
So we just used a pilot sort of trial last year of 5. So I mentioned we've got sort of over 100 direct suppliers as well as then sub-tier suppliers beyond that. You know, and part of the work that we're doing is taking the data points, you know, from those initial pilot audits that we conducted to really adopt a risk-based approach to our audit program. And that, you know, the audit program is just one aspect of the program. Obviously, we have due diligence, you know, on the way in before we engage suppliers, ongoing due diligence during the relationship, on-site visits that mightn't be specific, you know, modern slavery audits, per se.
As I mentioned, we're working on upskilling our internal capabilities that will then enable us to roll out, you know, a broader supplier audit program in future years.
Okay, another question: the map that you showed, this map differs to the one in the reporting. I noticed that Thailand was previously considered high risk, and you've now got it in moderate risk. What operations do you have in Thailand? Interested because a lot of conflict minerals get sent to Thailand to be used in electronics such as LCD circuit boards, whatever.
Yeah. So in Thailand, we've got suppliers who supply printers, and printing for us. Yep.
Hi, I'm Maisie from Nikko. Just curious to know, out of your audits and your DDs, have you found any kind of breaches or risk areas and taken any hard action, if you like, or what is your toolkit there, if you did find any?
Yeah. So of the five audits we've done over the year, which have just been, you know, recently completed, I guess, to give you an example of the types of things we've found, you know, we had a supplier who had said they captured sort of age data for their employees, and in fact, you know, they didn't have data to support that they were capturing that information. So, you know, we've worked with them to improve their processes as they onboard employees to ensure, you know, they're capturing that data.
So, you know, we're sort of collating all the material that we've learned from those five supplier audits, and working with our suppliers and getting really positive, I guess, response and engagement from our suppliers in working with us to improve their practices and processes.
From Aware Super again. Just curious and interested on the anti-modern slavery forum you hosted, and what did that involved, and what were the outcomes of that?
You happy to talk to her?
Sure. So it was developed by our sort of working group, our Anti-Modern Slavery working group, and, you know, comprised of bringing key leaders from across our global business, as well as having some major suppliers, external lawyers that we use, sort of present and talk to, you know, real-life sort of case studies and experience. And part of really the driving focus of that initial inaugural summit was around awareness, and helping our people understand more about modern slavery, what it looks like, where it might exist in our business. And so it was the first one we did, and it was really successful.
Any other questions in the room? Any on the line?
Yes, we do have a few, Natalie. In the latest disclosures, you didn't report on your financial 23 emissions. Why not? And when can we expect to see this? It's possibly one for Harry.
Great question.
Yeah.
Harry, you want to take that?
Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question. In the course of the last year, we have been throwing every resource at developing our greenhouse gas inventory for FY 2022. It's been an enterprise-wide effort. We've had teams from right across the business, and we've needed to collect data for all those gap areas that Deanne had on the slide in her presentation. So things like, you know, our supplier base, our customer base, you know, what we're doing with freight, all the details around our own facilities with electricity and fuel consumption. We needed to collect all that data. That's what we prioritized, because we had to get our submission to the Science Based Targets initiative by November this year. We were successful with that.
We have started with our FY23 data, and we'll be reporting that data after the SBTi validates our targets.
Is there another question, James?
There is. There's another one on anti-modern slavery, but I'll give you a pause, Anne, and maybe direct another one to Harry, if I can, Natalie. So you've said your targets are subject to endorsement by the SBTi. Could you explain in a bit more detail what this process involves, and could they go up as a result?
I'll start with the second part of the question, first, and the actual percentages that we've got are based on the SBTi's own calculators. So, we put in our base year emissions into those that calculator. We also put the year that we wanted to meet our near-term target, which is 2033, and it gave us the percentages of emissions reduction required to align with the Paris Agreement. In terms of the process, I think it's usually about a three-month process for the SBTi to examine our submission. And there may be a bit of back and forth there. So there's a lot of various requirements that the SBTi rules set out.
There may be some back and forth, but we expect, as we pointed out, that we'll have it all resolved by midway through calendar 2024, if not earlier.
Just to add to that, for clarity, yes, it could go up. The targets could go up. It's entirely subject to SBT approval, so.
The SBTi rules could change as well. Like, if the SBTi rules may change as well.
Good.
I also had one more question in the room. Go ahead, please.
Hi, I'm Sarah from UniSuper. Just want to say great progress on the science-based targets, 'cause I know it's been hard to collect the data. I have a question for both of you. It seems like talking to suppliers is the key piece to both the anti-modern slavery and the climate stuff. So can you talk a little bit about how you're working together to get that information, make sure, and talking to suppliers together? And I guess one other thing is, it seems like for anti-modern slavery, there may be a bit of crossover with the kind of bribery and corruption and money laundering and that sort of stuff. So just in general, talk a bit about how you're working with the rest of the business to get all that information.
Deanne, do you want to take that?
Yeah. So the sourcing organization resides in supply chain. It, which is under my remit. It's a team of, you know, approximately probably 30, 35 people. There is a team that is focused specifically on anti-modern slavery. They do provide guidance and questions for audits. We do go on-site visits as to, you know, work with suppliers regularly on all levels of things, from quality, cost, delivery. But we do have a very strong governance process that talks about the anti-modern slavery, that talks about our emissions, talks about DE and I. So I was recently on two weeks of travel with suppliers across Asia, and we regularly talk about all of these topics, and not only where their progress is on each of them, but what their plans are for the next year.
It all resides underneath that sourcing team within supply chain, and it's a regular conversation on all of these different governance topics.
Hi, John Lamputis from NGS Super. I was just interested in how you classify those countries between high, low, and, yeah, medium. Some of those seemed-
So I can-
... interesting.
... So those classifications are determined by the Walk Free organization, so they're not done by us. So we're just using their latest analysis, which I think is the 2023 assessment. Yep. Which may also, sorry, to the earlier question, may be why the list is a bit different to what was in the last disclosure. Any other questions in the room before I go again to the webcast? Okay.
Okay, now the emissions question: Can you talk about whether carbon credits will be part of the emissions strategy?
Why don't you take that?
Thanks for the question, James. No, under the science-based targets initiative rules, you know, we can't use carbon credits. There is a rule around residual credits, where you can offset those, but that's, you know, right at the end of the process, towards 2050. But for now, we're looking at actual emissions reductions.
Thank you. Okay, in the absence of any further questions, I'll thank my colleagues and introduce my colleague, Eloy Martinez, to take us through the final section of today's presentation, starting with tribal customer engagement.
Thank you, Natalie. Good morning. My name is Eloy, and I serve as Aristocrat's Vice President of Government Relations based in Washington, D.C. I'm delighted to be presenting on the topic of tribal customer engagement today. I've spent much of my professional life as a political staffer, handling government relations for gaming associations, and most recently here at Aristocrat, working closely with key tribal gaming organizations and customer representatives. For Aristocrat, our relationship with tribes is more than just good business. We appreciate the significant value and trust our tribal customers place in long-term relationships, aligned to how we at Aristocrat work to achieve long-term outcomes for all stakeholders in a sustainable way. We are also proud of the role we play in supporting our tribal customers' socioeconomic development, which is highly aligned to our sustainability agenda.
As we move through the presentation, there are a few messages I hope to underline, some of which may be new to this audience. First, the legal framework underpinning tribal gaming is unique, and today ensures the segment is large, well-regulated, and growing across the U.S. Gaming plays a vital role supporting tribal sovereignty and delivering services to tribal and non-tribal citizens, creating jobs, funding healthcare, education, and community infrastructure. Aristocrat has served customers for many years. With the acquisition of VGT in 2014, we significantly expanded our footprint in a differentiated segment, and today are proud to be a leading tribal gaming supplier. Class II gaming, which is the type of gaming unique to tribal casinos, is fundamental to our customers.
I'll expand on this shortly, but want to underline that Aristocrat leads the industry with our investment in Class II portfolios and other products that help our tribal customers compete and grow. Tribal customer relations also tend to be long-term, multifaceted partnerships, reflecting the permanent nature of the tribes and their generational focus. Finally, I'll leave you with a sense of how Aristocrat is striving to contribute to tribal community advancement beyond transactional and commercial aspects of our relationships. Moving first to the legal framework for tribal gaming. Federally recognized tribes in the U.S. have sovereignty over their designated lands and affairs. This means they're able to run and operate their own tribal administration or government, delivering services and running commercial and government operations on their lands for the benefit of their citizens.
The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, commonly known as IGRA, was passed in 1988 and created a comprehensive legal framework which recognized tribes can offer gaming. The act established three classes of gaming with a different regulatory scheme for each. Class I, exclusive to tribes, and typically includes tribal ceremonial games such as stickball, and some of you may be familiar with lacrosse, pretty similar to between the two. Class II is the game of chance, commonly known as bingo, including electronic versions and games that use bingo algorithms, which you can see examples of on the screen. It's regulated by the tribal gaming commissions, the individual tribal gaming commissions, with oversight from the National Indian Gaming Commission. These products are not subject to state fees, nor do they require any agreement with the state.
Class III products are everything else, from the EGMs you're familiar with here in Australia, to the table games and the like. Revenues generated from permitted Class III gaming may require a tribe to pay state fees, depending on the provisions of their compact. But let's quickly go back to Class II, as the definition under IGRA has led to the development and subsequent growth of a uniquely tribal type of gaming product. It's particularly important, given tribes are able to maintain their sovereignty and regulate Class II gaming on their trust land with no involvement from the state. This contributes to tribal gaming sustainability, and is part of the reason why gaming is a key part of many tribes' integrated resort and hospitality offerings, and a major driver of jobs and revenue for many tribal communities.
You can see examples on the screen of the evolution of the Class II products over the last 35 years, from 1987 to 2023. So, next slide. Tribal gaming is far larger and more sophisticated than many people assume. It's actually larger than commercial gaming by some metrics, and it's proven resilient and continues to grow. For example, in 2022, there were 523 tribal casinos in the U.S., versus 468 commercial properties. Tribal gaming generated nearly $41 billion in gross gaming revenue, compared to $60.5 billion for for-profit gaming operators. Additionally, there were more than 750,000 gaming machines at tribal and for-profit casinos, with tribes operating over 11,000 more devices across the U.S.
The growth is partly reflective of increased demand for gaming in the U.S., but also the strong investment from tribes in new, expanded, and modern properties that are very competitive and attractive for customers to visit. The map shows the presence of tribal gaming in dark blue, or dark purple, which is limited to 29 of the 35 states where tribes are federally recognized, with the largest being Oklahoma, Washington, and California. Again, Aristocrat has supplied tribal customers since the industry was regulated in 1988. As I mentioned with our acquisition of VGT in 2014, we became a leading supplier to the tribal gaming segment in the U.S. Since then, we have more than doubled our design and development spend in Class II products to ensure our customers have the best possible portfolio to support their success.
In fact, Aristocrat invests significantly more in Class II product than any other supplier, and this is in addition to our investment in our Class III games and other products for tribal and non-tribal customers. As you can see on the screen, in our latest global customer NPS survey, our tribal customers rated us at a 70, which is excellent, outperforming all competitors. 85% ranked Aristocrat highest for product performance, and 100% agreed that Aristocrat's gaming products are key contributors to the success of their gaming business. You'll hear more feedback from some of our customers in a short video to provide more color on these important relationships. Overall, many tribal customers share Aristocrat's commitment to responsible gameplay, again, underlining a shared focus on long-term sustainability.
In 2023, a dedicated Native American relations program was stood up in our Americas gaming business, designed with significant tribal input. It's part of an effort to deepen ties between our business and tribal customers, while also delivering some concrete benefits, such as creating education and employment opportunities for tribal citizens and contributing to broader tribal industry initiatives and institutions. In FY 2023, we launched an internal employee impact group, otherwise known as an EIG at Aristocrat, because we recognize that educating ourselves is a foundational requirement to closer partnerships. The EIG led our recognition of Native American History Month at Aristocrat this past year, and there's more to come, with the inclusion of educational materials in our onboarding curriculum and team training planned in 2024.
We also recently launched a first-of-its-kind-in-the-industry major scholarship program through the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, otherwise known as AISES, starting with 12 tribes in 2023. Under the program, Aristocrat funds scholarships for, scholarships for students from tribal nations to advance their careers in STEM and in gaming. We were also recognized as the AISES Corporate Partner of the Year for this work and other initiatives. In partnership with customers, we're looking to complement our scholarship programs to also offer on-the-job training and mentorship opportunities for Native American graduates over time. As our customers have told us, the pathways to employment are critical.
These initiatives build on the charitable contributions Aristocrat has provided in previous years to Native American-supported institutions, including funding for the Oklahoma Association on Problem Gambling and Gaming, the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma, and the National Native American Hall of Fame, among many other organizations. We thought it was important that you hear from some of our tribal customers directly. So we'll wrap with a short video in which you'll hear from Chairwoman Lynn Valbuena of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, Chief Gary Batton of the Choctaw Nation, along with Bill Lance, a non-executive director of Aristocrat and prominent Native American leader. Please play the video.
Hamikamsh. San Manuel appreciates our partnership with Aristocrat Gaming. You provide Yaamava' Resort Casino and The Palms Casino in Las Vegas with some of the top games in the industry that our customers enjoy. Your gaming products help us to generate critical revenue to fund important government operations and programs.
Gaming currently is about 93% of our total revenue. I can think years ago when I started with the tribe, we had 120 employees. We were totally dependent upon the federal government. Now we have 9,900 employees. We're about 60%-70% where we create our own revenue. That's helped us provide employment opportunities, healthcare, social programs, housing. It's been a huge impact to our communities and specifically to our tribal members.
San Manuel and Aristocrat are both longtime supporters of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, also known as AISES. AISES has been focused on developing Native youth in science, technology, and engineering and math. We appreciate the role Aristocrat plays in providing opportunities for Native youth to learn from one of the leading technology firms in the world.
Class II is what's helped us start all of this, and so we can do Class II even without the compact with the state of Oklahoma. So no matter what happens for our future, I think it helps us sustain our future, because if they try to do things in regards to our compact with the state of Oklahoma, this allows us, we can go Class II everywhere and still keep the same economic impact, the same service delivery to our tribal members. All the things that we stand for, we can, we can maintain.
As a Chickasaw citizen and Non-Executive Director on the Board of Aristocrat, I just really appreciate the meaningful engagement that has occurred within Indian Country, and that relationship is very real. We're so thankful when we have great corporations who want to partner with Indian Country, and they respect those relationships and individual sovereigns and their unique history and culture. And as a board member, I can just say it's something that I'm very proud of. The company definitely lives to that standard each and every day.
A big thank you to Chairwoman Valbuena, Chief Batton, and of course, Director Bill Lance, for their time and candor. Thanks for agreeing to share their perspectives. That concludes my remarks, and I'll pass to Christie Roser and Christie Ung to address diversity and inclusion.
Thanks, Eloy, Eloy. My name is Christie Roser. I get mine right, not necessarily Eloy, Eloy's. I'm the Chief People and Culture Officer, and with me to speak on this topic is Christie Ung, our Director of Diversity and Inclusion. I'll begin with some comments on our strategy and philosophy in this important area. Our diversity and inclusion strategy is a living, growing commitment that's set with input from the ground up in our organization, and it's reviewed annually by our board. By setting targets, implementing focused programs, and reporting transparently on our progress, we strive to deliver important advantages, new capabilities, and a stronger culture to our business. The global nature of our operations, which you've heard a lot about in the sessions today, requires us to take a very broad approach to diversity and inclusion to ensure that we meet the expectations of our whole workforce.
To achieve this, we're currently focused on three main areas, which you can see on the slide on the screen. The first being increasing the representation of women in our business. Secondly, driving an inclusive culture. And third, extending our diversity focus beyond just gender. Each of these areas correlate to set out strategic priorities that have actions and initiatives that are designed to help us move the needle forward. I'm pleased to confirm that in addition to gender targets, in fiscal 2024, we have new targets around increasing the representation of employees from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. I'll come back to this shortly, but it is an important advance in our diversity and inclusion program.
Candidly, we've struggled in past years to get visibility and adequate data about our employees' non-gender-related diversity and inclusion attributes, including race and cultural backgrounds, to facilitate the development of priorities, programs, and targets in this area. We know that data is one of the reasons that we've been able to focus on driving female representation over recent years, but we also knew we always wanted to increase beyond gender. So in 2023, we made a big push to collect cultural and other diversity data on a voluntary-only basis, while respecting our employees' privacy. As a result of this push, we now have enough data and the insights that we need to bring forward targets in some locations, and this is enabling us to drive a significant broadening of our DNI focus over the coming years.
In terms of key initiatives to support this agenda, I'll let Christine speak to some of the highlights, but I will just say a few words about our philosophy. We take a very practical, employee-led approach that really aims to harness the energy of our people. We believe that we can achieve greater outcomes by setting out key focus areas and empowering our people to operate within those in the ways that they believe will drive meaningful change.... The creation of our employee impact groups, which Eloy referenced, is a great example of this. These are groups of employee volunteers who want to come together to celebrate and drive a diversity and inclusion topic. It could be LGBTQI visibility, promoting women in engineering, celebrating Latin or African American culture, or Indigenous advancement in Australia and in the U.S., as you heard Eloy reference earlier.
These groups do receive support and funding from Aristocrat, but they determine their own activities, and they run independently, whether that's holding special events, education sessions, or social activities. Another example of this ground-up approach is our support for the creation of an Indigenous recognition working group in response to staff advocacy here in Australia. When Aristocrat came to consider its position on the Voice referendum, we were able to ask this group for their view. This group, their advice was not to advocate for a yes or a no, but rather to encourage staff to get engaged and to become informed. So that's the approach that we took, including distributing information from both campaigns and encouraging respectful discussions. Here at Aristocrat, we think it's win-win to empower and also leverage the wisdom and the energy of our own people in this regard.
With that, I'm pleased to pass to Christine, who will share a little more about the progress we've made in 2023 and what's next. Thank you.
Thanks, Christie. As Christie mentioned, we track and report our progress annually, including against a number of targets. We're proud to be part of HESTA's 40:40 Vision, pledging our commitment to gender diversity and setting targets to achieve a 40-40-20 gender balance in executive leadership by 2030. During the year, we further increased the representation of women on our board and our top leadership levels to well above 40%, and we also further increased the representation of women overall across the entire enterprise to 32.4%, getting closer to our target. In fact, today, women represent the majority of executives reporting to our CEO, Trevor Croker. In addition, while our board overall stands at around 44% female in total, 50% of our non-executive directors are women. That is, when you exclude our sole executive director and CEO.
Field service, engineering, and technology are some of the areas where progress has been more gradual. These are traditionally male-dominated areas, and from a recruitment perspective, there isn't a large female talent pool that we can recruit from. We are looking outside the box in order to increase the representation of women in these areas. For example, last year, we implemented a Women in Field Service program in Australia, whereby women were recruited without any field service experience, and the program offered comprehensive training. This resulted in 11 women being hired into field service roles from 0. Retention is just as important, so we focus on fostering a work environment that's supportive of women's growth and development, including through programs like Ready to Rise and our employee impact groups. In addition to making progress against these targets, we also received recognition as a Work180 Endorsed Employer for all women.
Only 50% of all companies that apply for endorsement meet Work180 standards. We also participated in the Work180 DEI assessment, which looks at companies, which assesses companies' strengths and gaps across 10 key gender equality indicators across Australian organizations. Aristocrat scored 62%, which places us in the top 16% of participating organizations. Finally, we also participated in the All In Index, which is an annual survey conducted by the All In Diversity Project, which measures diversity, inclusion, and belonging practices. As a first-time participant in 2023, Aristocrat received the highest score out of 32 participating global gaming companies. Looking ahead, we've got plenty to focus on. Our priorities and objectives for the next 12-24 months include embedding our new board-endorsed targets to increase the representation of leaders from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.
These targets, which address the U.S., U.K., and Australia, are up on the screen. We're also building on our work to ensure that our hiring and selection practices are inclusive, free from bias, and consider a diverse and broad talent pool. Further equipping our employees with the knowledge and the resources to foster diversity and inclusion will also be key. A diversity and inclusion knowledge program encompassing a calendar of workshops available to all employees will also be launched during the year. During FY 2024, we'll continue to build on the Ready to Rise program for women and their allies by incorporating participant feedback, and we'll continue to support the growth and impact of our employee impact groups. Finally, we'll continue to participate in external benchmarking to better understand our strengths and areas of opportunity in relation to best practice.
In closing, I want to acknowledge and thank you for your continued interest and encouragement. As Christie said at the outset, we invest in DNI because we believe that it makes us a stronger and better business among other pros, and that it delivers real advantages, some of which we've touched on today. We know we can always do more and improve what we're already doing, and we welcome your continued feedback. Thank you, and with that, I'll pass to my colleague, Jake Martens, to address cybersecurity.
Thanks, Christine. Let me add one more good morning from the stage. I'm Jake Martens, and I have the privilege of serving as the Chief Information Security Officer at Aristocrat. In recent years, Aristocrat's cybersecurity efforts have been largely focused on an accelerated maturity curve, with strong investment in an increasingly sophisticated whole-of-organization approach. We've pivoted from decentralized teams to a more consistent and centralized approach, with clear enterprise-wide leadership, strategy, and accountability. From a governance perspective, cyber risks are fully integrated into our group risk management framework, with appropriate executive and board oversight. We're executing on a raft of capability, governance, and culture initiatives designed to move us up the curve in order to increasingly protect the organization via robust cybersecurity controls, and also to drive business value via cybersecurity capabilities that are increasingly differentiated in the market.
We're very clear about our vision and mission in this complex and fast-moving space, and we take a comprehensive approach that spans enterprise security, things like endpoints, networks, corporate applications, et cetera, and product security, our products, games, development, operations, et cetera. We seek to, of course, prevent incidents proactively wherever we can, while also managing, monitoring, and testing our controls actively. Of course, we must also swiftly respond when needed in the event of an incident. I want to comment on a few differentiated aspects of our cybersecurity approach. One, our global cyber specialist team has grown materially in the last couple of years. In fact, from 2022 to 2023, it's more than doubled in size. I'm very, very proud that our team is, as of December 1, 50% female, up from 45% in our disclosures in September.
Due to that diversity investment, as well as the capacity and capability that come with it, we've also been able to significantly step up our execution and positive impact. Additionally, we've enhanced our internal and external communication and engagement, delivering compelling evangelism regarding our results and our strategy. Number two, because around three-quarters of all cyber breaches happen due to human error, no cybersecurity program that focuses only on technology or governance is going to be effective. As a result, we focus on ensuring our people are cyber aware, appreciating why cybersecurity matters, and knowing how to behave securely. This is why you'll hear and see from me the importance of the human element repeatedly.
Finally, I would reiterate that our cybersecurity effort is not only focused on protecting the business and minimizing risks, but also on value enablement and capitalizing on opportunities, including enhancing supplier, customer, and employee engagement, as well as pursuing a powerful digital trust reputation. FY 2023 has been an acceleration year for Aristocrat as we target a lift in our cybersecurity maturity. We've consolidated technologies, revamped our product security operating model, and continued to increase cyber governance across the organization. This enhances our level of protection and minimizes risk. Additionally, we've transitioned to a new industry cybersecurity framework to measure maturity and applied this assessment to each and every business and group for the first time. This is part of our strategy to ensure we have a rigorous and consistent way of understanding our risks and our opportunities, as well as assessing progress.
We've expanded third-party supplier risk assessments and improved third-party cyber governance while increasing the volume of cybersecurity supplier assessments. Importantly, we've also adopted a risk-based approach, enabling us to focus resources and prioritize high-risk suppliers, ultimately implementing stronger controls where there are higher risks to the organization. We've also delivered our first ISO 27001 certification renewal for one of our businesses and established a plan to expand this critical compliance attestation globally. In terms of evangelism, we've we have a comprehensive internal communication and education program, including a dedicated Cybersecurity Awareness Month at Aristocrat. We deliver and measure completion of monthly training to all employees, with a targeted, additional targeted communications as relevant for executives, finance folks, P&C folks, et cetera.
We've more than doubled the delivery of phishing simulation campaigns across the business this year, and we've increased the compliance of our compulsory staff training from about 80% in 2022 to more than 90% in 2023. Increasingly, our communications extend to external stakeholders as well, such as industry bodies, customers, regulators, law enforcement, investors, as we seek to share, partner, and collaborate on cybersecurity issues and contribute to best practice. During the year, Aristocrat was impacted by a cyber incident, which we have disclosed. This event involved a criminal hacker exploiting a newly identified, or what we call zero-day vulnerability, in third-party file-sharing software used by Aristocrat. The hacker extracted data from a company server, including personal information belonging to Aristocrat employees, as well as other data. We took comprehensive and quick steps to contain and manage the incident....
Finally, pivoting to our strategic objectives for the year ahead, we will continue to drive improvements in risk management across people, process, and technology, along with our threat and risk assessment practices. We will also continue to focus on business empowerment and accountability, as well as deepening stakeholder engagement and driving value from our increasingly differentiated cybersecurity capabilities, both internally and externally. With that, I will hand it back to my colleague, Natalie, to invite your questions.
Thanks, Jake, and Eloy, Christine, and Christy. We've got a few minutes left. The screen is telling me one minute. I'm sure we'll get a couple more than that. So any last questions from the room, I'd love to invite now? One question over there.
Hi, Natalie. A question perhaps for Jake. Obviously, we saw some cyber attacks in Vegas recently. Can you just talk about the learnings from your cyber incident? And, and importantly, how many exercises do you have for crisis management team exercises in the event of an incident such as that?
Yeah, great question. Certainly, while regrettable, the incident that we experienced this summer, again, was the result of a zero-day attack, a previously unknown and unidentified vulnerability that was exploited by a group of criminal hackers. We took quick action to quarantine, contain, manage the incident, and have applied a very rigorous process of evaluating what additional controls we can put in place, additional steps that we can take, and have strong executive and board support to go and implement those, which are in progress. In terms of the incidents in Vegas, over the last couple of months, we also, via our threat assessment program, did a deep analysis on what occurred, what we know occurred, what we can surmise happened, how the attacker gained initial access via social engineering attack, how they moved laterally within the environment.
What we did is twofold: We looked at the controls that we have in place at Aristocrat, confident about many of those, identified some things that we can do additionally, evaluated our products that sit on the operator's floor, obviously, and just ensured that we had similarly to our own incident, even though this was not our incident, we mapped out a number of recommendations, gained the executive support, are in process of managing those through to completion.
Thank you. Question here.
Hi, Jake. Just on these new businesses, the acquisitions, is there anything there from a cyber point of view that you may need to look towards in the future?
Yeah, it's a great question, and both for our Roxor acquisition as well as the in-process NeoGames acquisition, cybersecurity, as well as privacy and other, risk management organizations, are a part, active part of due diligence. Gone through that process. Now we're actively involved with our partners in NeoGames to look at the integration elements, what we learned, what we know, what we need to be doing. So it's an active and very, you know, leaning forward kind of an engagement from an M&A standpoint.
Karen Halliday again from Future Fund. Interested, you mentioned that cyber team has doubled. From what to what?
We have a cyber team that's many dozens of people. As I said, more than 50% now are female, and so a strong diversity, which pays many dividends to us. We have a plan for additional investments this year, supported by our executives and our board, but several dozen people involved in cybersecurity across the whole of Aristocrat.
Okay, and, you mentioned the data breach that had impacted employee data. How often or what risks are there to customer data, and how do you think these cybercriminals would use that?
What I will say is I won't comment further beyond the employee data. What we have done is a deep analysis of the additional data and have determined that it is of low business value and impact, potential impact, were it to be disclosed.
Any further questions from the room? Any questions from the web, the webcast, James?
Yeah, we have got one here. Why are you only setting targets for cultural mix for your operations in the U.S., Australia, and the U.K.?
Great question, and I might pass to Christine.
Sure. So we have employees in more than 20 countries, and from a legal standpoint, we're not able to collect or ask these questions in every country. The three countries in question here are countries where we can collect that data, and they also represent a significant proportion of our employee base. So from that perspective, by focusing on those three countries, because it is a start for us, we are able to make a good start, I think, in terms of driving overall positive impact to the cultural and ethnic diversity of our overall representation.
Thanks, Christine. Maybe another point to make there, too, is that those three countries are also quite multicultural, so the ambitions make more sense in that context compared to places which are a bit more, you know, racially homogeneous. Both of those aspects, I think, are relevant. Any other questions from the line?
... There is one other one here. How many Native American employees does Aristocrat have? And the question goes on to say, and indigenous employees more generally.
So right now we have 2.3% that identify as Native American or Alaska Native, with the national average being at 2.9%. Obviously, a lot of what I talked about today is to increase those numbers, hence the scholarship and the pipeline to careers within Aristocrat. I think it's something we're excited about and we want to build upon, so.
Yeah, thanks, Eli.
Thanks, James.
I would say that 2.3%, just full transparency, we don't have 100% of people sharing their information with us, so that's not a full account, but certainly more to do and we're very keen to drive those numbers up. Any final questions from the room? Well, thank you very much. And with that, I will let everybody go and hand over to Trevor Croker for some closing comments.
Well, thanks, Natalie. It's been a substantive and broad-ranging session today. We hope you've found it useful, and it's been an opportunity to learn more about our business and about our sustainability journey. I also think that you've seen the depth of sustainability at Aristocrat from a cultural level, as opposed to just a number of targets and programs, and I hope you've been able to gain that from this presentation today. Thank you for your time, today, including those who are attending via the webcast. Thank you for your questions, comments, and feedback. We see sustainability as an ever-changing and evolving dialogue in which the perspectives of our shareholders and the market are important to us.
Given it's our first such event, we'll be inviting you to complete a short survey, which will land in your inbox shortly and help us to improve on these sorts of sessions into the future. I also encourage you, if you haven't already done so, to take an opportunity to review our full 2023 disclosure at Aristocrat.com. If you have any follow-up questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to Marla or James from the Investor Relations team, who'll be more than happy to assist you. With that, I wish everybody a good day, and thank you again for your participation. Thank you, and good afternoon.