UKGC clarifies financial risk check questions

Added: September 8, 2023

In a recent blog post, the UKGC has attempted to clarify a variety of questions about newly proposed financial risk assessments for local gambling operators.

The publication of this post follows the initiation of one of the regulatory authority’s first gambling white paper consultations, which the UKGC originally announced in the first half of July. The consultation covered the topic of financial risk assessments and proposed the implementation of new mandatory checks to ensure that players are not spending more on the pastime than they can reasonably afford to.

This proposal has generated a fair bit of misinformation on the internet, which has caught the Commission’s attention, driving it to clarify the misunderstandings to help industry stakeholders partaking in the consultation base their responses on accurate information.

The regulator mentioned that the proposed checks would be of a frictionless variety, taking place predominantly through credit checks to help operators gauge the financial situations of their users. Additionally, the UKGC added that these checks would only be carried out on 3% of customers.

The authority also mentioned that in cases where customers either don’t have credit profiles or don’t consent to sharing their credit data, they would be asked to provide proof of their financial well-being via bank statements or a variety of receipts, however, the Commission estimates that this would only affect about 0.3% of users around the country.

Furthermore, the regulator added that it is also proposing the implementation of more surface-level financial risk assessments for 20% of all customers that will be based on publicly available data and will pretty much never interrupt the players’ gambling experiences.

Gambling Commission, UKGC