After the winning, comes the hard part – how not to lose it all.
To this end, Singapore Pools – together with the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) MoneySENSE – have put in place the Care for Winners Programme.
As part of the programme, Singapore Pools staff meet with customers who claim prizes of S$5,000 or more, to share financial planning tips and responsible gaming messages so that their windfall will be a positive experience.
The programme, launched in 2016, replaced the Winners Wealth Management programme which was introduced in 2010 to educate winners of large prize amounts on how they can preserve and grow their newfound wealth.
Under the new programme, the big winners are given a Care for Winners kit, each with bilingual videos, brochures, posters, banners and standees which convey advice on how to manage their winnings.
The material provides information on how to become debt-free by paying off any outstanding loans, avoiding drastic lifestyle changes, thinking twice before spending excessively, and investing wisely by understanding the limitations and potential risks involved.
Singapore Pools declined to be interviewed by The Business Times on how its staff broach the subject with these big winners or what they do if the staff are turned away.
But on its website, Singapore Pools says that in line with “our duty of care towards our customers, Singapore Pools hopes to help prize winners realise that they can become winners in life too, through good management of their prize money”.
Singapore Pools was set up in 1968 to provide a legal avenue for betting and to combat illegal gambling – the idea was mooted by then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Explaining the rationale for state-run lotteries such as Big Sweep and Toto, Mr Lee said in a 1977 speech: “If you do not run (the lotteries), the chap ji kee (Hokkien for a game called “12 cards”) man, who has always swindled the people of their money, is still there.”
On the ground, Singapore Pools has about 10 Responsible Gambling (RG) Ambassadors, whose job it is to reach out to punters.
For instance, as patrons watch the telecast of sports events and bet live, the RG Ambassadors are at Singapore Pools’ LiveWire venues watching over them.
These ambassadors are there to spot individuals who might need a reminder about putting a limit on their bets, and provide guidance on where to go for counselling if they need help.
Singapore Pools started the RG Ambassador programme six years ago and some of its ambassadors are certified counsellors.
Others have gone through a series of training by professionals which focused on problem gambling and counselling skills.
These ambassadors are taught that if they suspect a patron of having a gambling problem, they are to approach the individual and ask two questions: “Once you start gambling, can you walk away?” and “Do you feel compelled to gamble till your last dollar, increasing the bet amount in a bid to recover money lost previously?”
And where questions might not be enough, perhaps statistics might do the trick.
On the Singapore Pools website, several sobering facts are made clear about the odds that bettors are up against.
You are more likely, for example, to be struck by lightning (a one in 240,000 chance) than to strike the Toto jackpot (a one in 14 million chance).
May you never experience the former, even if the latter is almost impossible.
Read Also: 10 things you can do with S$12 million
juditht@sph.com.sg
This article was first published on January 28, 2017.
Get The Business Times for more stories.
