Regulation

After a long stretch of consultation, piloting and plenty of debate, the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has made its call. There will be a new set of financial risk assessments going ahead, brought in gradually through a staged rollout rather than switched on all at once.

While this decision is sure to spark strong opinions from all sides of the industry, it's now confirmed which should allow everyone to get prepared. If you gamble online, the most obvious question is what does it actually mean for you? The UKGC is insisting that it will be of very little impact to the vast majority. But it's worth understanding exactly what's changing, who it will affect and how it's meant to work.

What's actually changing

The commission's board has decided to press ahead with financial risk assessments, taking what it calls a careful, staged approach off the back of its pilot. In plain terms, these assessments give licensed operators access to a limited amount of credit reference data for the first time.

They don't replace the current financial vulnerability checks already in place; they sit alongside them as an extra tool aimed at spotting higher-spending players who might be in genuine financial difficulty. In fact, all of the existing requirements for operators will remain; these new financial risk assessments are just an addition.

The new financial risk assessment checks only kick in once someone's "net deposits" pass certain thresholds. This is calculated as the total amount you've deposited minus the total amount you've withdrawn, within a stated timeframe. The thresholds are high to begin with, with the first stage targeting the largest operators and the biggest spenders:

  • £5,000 net deposit across a rolling 24-hour period for over-25s
  • £2,500 net deposit across a rolling 24-hour period for under-25s

After this first stage, further stages are planned - although the exact details are still to be hashed out based on feedback from industry stakeholders. However, we do know that when the system is eventually rolled out in full, the net deposit thresholds are set to drop considerably to:

  • £1,000 across a rolling 24 hours, or £3,000 across a rolling 90 days, for over-25s
  • £750 across a rolling 24 hours, or £2,000 across a rolling 90 days, for under-25s

For "rolling period", this simply means that the window of time moves with you. So a rolling 24 hours always means the last 24 hours counting back from right now. If you checked at 3pm today, it would include everything from 3pm yesterday onwards. The same idea applies to the 90-day figures.

However, it's important to remember that these thresholds could always change. The UKGC has been clear this is a phased process, so the exact amounts could shift before everything is fully in place. If any changes are made, this will be communicated by the commission directly.

Who this actually affects

Perhaps the most important point to note is how the UKGC predicts that the vast majority of players will never need a new financial risk assessment at all. In the early stages, only the very highest spenders at the biggest operators will come into scope. But even once fully implemented, the commission expects fewer than 3% of accounts to be affected in total.

Any player that's flagged as potentially being in financial difficulty will be provided support. Operators are expected to respond proportionately, weighing up everything else that's known about the player. That might mean easing off on marketing and promotional offers, or helping them to set a deposit limit. Crucially, being flagged shouldn't automatically trigger a demand for piles of paperwork.

What a check involves

When a player triggers the thresholds above, the new financial risk assessment process is designed to be as frictionless as possible. In a predicted 97% of cases, it will be carried out by a credit reference agency, which will look for signs that someone is in financial difficulty. Crucially, no documents will be requested for these checks, they will not affect a player's credit score, and operators are not allowed to use any data for commercial purposes. Just as importantly, this is not an affordability check and it is not a cap on what you're allowed to spend.

What the operator receives is an overall risk score plus four specific data points, covering defaults, multiple arrears, significant arrears and whether you're on a Debt Management Plan. They can then use this, along with everything else they know about a player, to determine the next steps.

That's how it will work for most, but there's a tiny proportion of players (around 0.1%) who will trigger the above thresholds but won't be eligible for a credit reference agency check. For example, this can happen if someone has recently moved to Britain, or changed their name or address in a way that hasn't yet caught up on the credit reference systems. For that group, operators will need to confirm things another way, and the results of those alternative routes are likely to be mixed.

One option that the UKGC outlined is to utilise open banking, and it's arguably the one that would cause the least friction. There's already a range of online casinos with instant bank transfer payments that use open banking technology, and a sizeable number of UK players who happily use it. Therefore, the idea that this could also be used to help verify financial situations could meet fewer objections as many players are already comfortable with it.

However, the commission also mentions document checks as an alternative, and that's where things get stickier. Operators have been asking for sensitive financial documents for years already, and it's hugely disliked by the vast majority of players. The UKGC even notes that feedback from the industry suggests that the current approach to document checks actually increases the risk of people drifting towards the unlicensed market. However, the commission also insists that these new financial risk assessments will help, as they should reduce the need for document checks overall, leading to fewer players heading to the unlicensed market for this reason.

Whether it plays out that way will only be revealed after the full rollout, but that's the intention behind it.

When will players start to see these changes?

Because this is being introduced in stages, there's no single switch-on moment. The largest operators and highest spenders come first, with further stages following before the system reaches its full scope. The commission has said it will set up implementation groups to work through the practical details, and a formal timeline will be confirmed further down the line rather than now.

For the average player, that means there's no need to do anything or brace for sudden change. The thresholds, the timing and the finer points are all still being worked through, and some of it may yet shift as that process unfolds. The sensible takeaway is simply to understand roughly how the checks work and who they're aimed at, safe in the knowledge that for most people this will happen quietly in the background, if it touches them at all.