The regulator said 97% of triggered assessments could be completed without customers providing documents, while only 0.1% of active accounts would fall outside a frictionless process.
 

Key Points

The Gambling Commission said fewer than 3% of active customer accounts would trigger operator action under the proposed financial risk assessment model 

Of accounts that would undergo an assessment, the regulator said 97% could be checked without any customer action

The Commission is preparing to take its post-pilot findings to the Board for consideration on next steps 
 

The UK Gambling Commission has published an update on its post-pilot analysis of proposed financial risk assessments, defending the model after recent criticism and stating that the checks could be introduced in a largely frictionless way for high-spending remote gambling customers in financial difficulty.

In a blog published by Gambling Commission Director of Major Policy Projects and Evaluation, Helen Rhodes, the regulator said the assessments are intended to identify customers in current or worsening financial difficulty, rather than to impose spending caps or assess what an individual can afford to gamble.

The update comes amid heightened debate around so-called frictionless checks, with the Commission using the blog to push back on what it described as inaccurate commentary around the proposals. 

The regulator said some recent coverage had wrongly suggested the checks were already live or were driving consumers to illegal operators, despite no financial risk assessments having yet been implemented and no customer action having been taken on that basis during the pilot. 

The Commission said fewer than 3% of active customer accounts would trigger any operator steps under the proposal. Of those accounts, it said 97% would be assessed without requiring customers to take any action or provide documents. 

It added that only 0.1% of active accounts would both require an assessment and be unable to receive one in a frictionless manner, equal to around one customer in every 1,000 accounts across the remote sector.

The regulator said the findings were stronger than estimates set out in the Gambling Act Review white paper, which had projected that 80% of assessments would be frictionless and that around 0.6% of active accounts would fall outside that process.

The Commission also said the pilot showed operators could improve frictionless match rates by tightening existing age and identity verification procedures. It said issues such as allowing registration with an initial rather than a full name, or the use of a commercial address, could affect match quality and would be addressed through further compliance support.

The update also pointed to evidence that customers in the pilot cohort were between twice and four times more likely to have a debt management plan and between twice and five times more likely to have recorded a default in the previous 12 months than comparable consumers in the wider population.

The Commission said it will now take the pilot findings to its Board for consideration. It added that, if the assessments are introduced, it would work with operators and credit reference agencies on implementation and publish NatCen evaluation reports alongside any decision on next steps. 

In earlier Gambling Commission news, the regulator said a review of GSGB bingo data had narrowed the gap between survey estimates and industry admissions figures after adding a venue-level question on where bingo was played. 

The revised estimate for traditional bingo clubs fell closer to Bingo Association data, with further demographic analysis planned as the sample grows. 

 

 

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