Reminder: nothing has changed

Another day, another swingeing Gambling Commission fine for AML and affordability breaches. This time around it was Gamesys in the dock, to the tune of £6,000,000. I don’t take any great pleasure in picking through the bones of these settlements (“I told you so” isn’t a great sales or marketing strategy after all) but it is important to understand what is happening.

A partial list of issues reads as follows:

• “No risks were identified when one customer deposited £8,255 within three days of opening an account, another lost £5,968 within five weeks of opening account and another lost £17,482 within 34 days of opening an account”

• “In certain circumstances, some customers were able …. to spend significant sums without AML checks being conducted – one customer deposited £14,585 in a 28 week period, another deposited £18,884 in just over six months and another deposited £34,280 in five and a half months”

• “Conducting inadequate customer due diligence … of customers, including one who deposited over £25,000 in three months, another who deposited over £58,000 in six months, and another who deposited over £65,000 in six months”

Which all adds up to: not checking actual financial data when passing through the type of spend thresholds that have now been clarified in the whitepaper: ie a loss of £1,000 in a day or £2,000 in the space of three months. 

So far, so much business as usual. So why the blog post? Well, until the message that this IS business as usual has sunk in, we’ll keep beating the drum.

Affordability checks are here today

To read significant chunks of the gambling and racing media you would assume that affordability checks are something that is being proposed. Barely a day goes by without some dire warning about what will happen to the British racing industry, gambling industry, and humble punter if these checks are introduced some time in the future. In many cases, they come from people who really should (and probab