Financial Risk Assessments: what the new checks mean for high-spending players

The Gambling Commission is bringing in Financial Risk Assessments in stages, it confirmed on 7 July. The checks are designed to spot customers in serious financial difficulty without asking most people for payslips or bank statements.

Who will be checked

Very few players. The first stage applies only at the largest operators, and only where spending is very high over a short period: for most, that means £5,000 of net deposits within a rolling 24 hours, a pattern the Commission says fewer than 0.5% of customers exceed. It says people who bet occasionally, have recently won, or even regularly spend hundreds of pounds are unlikely to need a check.

How the check works

Assessments are carried out by credit reference agencies, need no documents from you, and do not affect your credit score. In the pilot, 97% of customers above the thresholds could be assessed this way, well above the 80% estimated in the 2023 White Paper. For the fewer than 1 in 1,000 accounts that cannot be assessed this way, operators will need to verify identity properly and may use open banking or ask for documents.

Why the Commission is doing it

The regulator says high-spending gamblers are two to four times more likely than the wider population to have a debt management plan, and two to five times more likely to have had a default in the past year. Without checks, some continue to receive marketing that encourages more gambling.

During the early stages the Commission will not take enforcement action over how operators respond to an assessment, although all existing licence requirements still apply.