The Betting and Gaming Council has described itself as “deeply disappointed and frustrated” with the Gambling Commission’s decision to introduce financial risk assessments in stages.
The UKGC’s announcement follows months of uncertainty over a proposal that has drawn objections from operators, racing bodies, campaigners and several parliamentarians.
Under the first stage, the largest operators will assess customers aged 25 and over whose net deposits exceed £5,000 in any rolling 24-hour period.
That threshold is notably higher than levels previously considered by the Commission during its earlier consultation phases.
BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst said the delays in implementation and revised thresholds showed that industry objections had been entirely justified throughout the process.
Hurst said: “The central issues around reliability, consumer impact and the practical operation of these checks remain unresolved.”
She went further, stating: “The Commission has failed to address the fundamental issues identified during its own pilot. It has not demonstrated that the data underpinning these checks is accurate, reliable or consistent enough to support regulatory decisions affecting customers.”
Hurst also pointed to specific problems uncovered during the pilot, warning that “the pilot exposed inconsistencies in the information returned by credit reference agencies, with the same customer potentially receiving different outcomes depending on the provider.”
The financial risk assessments stem from the 2023 Gambling Act Review white paper and are intended to flag online gambling customers who may be in serious financial difficulty.
The UKGC has been careful to distinguish the plan from traditional affordability checks, stating the assessments would not set spending limits or calculate what an individual can afford to gamble.
The policy sits alongside separate financial vulnerability checks that became mandatory for remote operators in 2024, using publicly available data to identify markers including bankruptcy orders and unpaid debts.
The Commission’s own post-pilot account was more positive, claiming fewer than 3% of active accounts would meet the proposed triggers, with 97% of assessments completed without customers needing to provide documents.
Its analysis also found that only one account in every 1,000 would both require an assessment and be unable to complete it in a genuinely frictionless manner.
The BGC disputes whether those findings settle the core concerns, arguing credit reference agencies returned inconsistent information that could wrongly identify customers as financially vulnerable.
Hurst noted the Commission had yet to publish a full evaluation of the pilot, leaving operators and the public without the evidence needed to properly assess the policy’s reliability.
The trade body repeated its warning that checks viewed as intrusive or unreliable could steer customers towards unlicensed gambling sites, worsening harm rather than reducing it.
Hurst concluded: “We support evidence-led, proportionate regulation that protects vulnerable people while allowing the 22.5 million adults in Britain who bet each month to do so safely.”
She added that “until the Commission can demonstrate these checks are accurate, consistent and genuinely frictionless, our fundamental concerns remain, including the risk of driving customers towards the growing illegal gambling market.”
The British Horseracing Authority also voiced strong opposition, with CEO Brant Dunshea saying the checks “will have severe financial implications for British racing and the UK economy.”
Dunshea warned the checks “will have the opposite effect: driving more customers to the illegal market, which puts them at much greater risk of gambling-related harm, and starving the Treasury of much needed tax revenue.”
