U.K. Gambling Commission (UKGC) CEO Andrew Rhodes is working to put out verbal fires sparked by what he calls “misunderstandings” over proposed financial risk checks originally proposed by the Gambling Act review white paper.
The UKGC has been walking those proposals back during the consultations that began this summer, iGaming Business reported.
Also known as affordability checks, the proposal has generated the most heated debate of the white paper’s topics since the paper was released in April. During testimony to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Select Committee hearing on gambling regulation, Rhodes said the commission had seen “a significant amount of misinformation… in direct responses to the consultation, in the media and on social media.”
It was a “key myth” that the affordability checks would be inconvenient for individuals, he said. The commission has proposed a “system of proportionate checks” that would concentrate on high spenders, who have the most chance of being harmed. About 3 percent of accounts would be affected. And those affected would be subject to “frictionless financial risk assessments” via “a credit reference agency, with no impact on credit score.”
The CEO said the clarifications, published in a Q&A format, would “aid responses during the remaining six weeks of the consultation.” He added, “We seek in our proposals to strike the right balance between the freedoms of people to gamble but also conducting proportionate checks to identify and protect the most vulnerable customers from harm.”
Only customers without a credit file or customers who don’t consent to share data through open banking would be required “to provide other evidence of financial circumstances to allow risk to be considered. This means that only an estimated 0.3 percent of account holders would ever be asked to provide information such as payslips or bank statements,” Rhodes told lawmakers.
The agency has also proposed “light touch” checks using publicly available data for one account in five, he said.
