What are affordability checks, anyway?

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. 

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced his intention to move forward with the Gambling review. Although we can’t yet be absolutely certain what this will entail, it appears that maximum stakes for online casino and fixed-odds games are likely to be recommended, with that level being set somewhere in the £2 to £5 range.

Here’s where things get really interesting, however. The purpose of these limits (and other affordability-related measures accompanying them) is to protect against ‘unsustainable losses’ on the part of consumers. On this basis, only those customers who can afford to bet more will be permitted to do so.Can 

How will an operator determine who those customers are? Well, the exact mechanism has not yet been determined, but the suggestion that such checks will be ‘non-intrusive’ at least gives us a hint. And it raises the question as to what ‘affordability checks’ really are - something discussed below.

But before getting to that, let’s take one moment to state the obvious:

When it comes to assessing affordability and protecting customers from life-changing losses, the time to act is now. There is a strong feeling that with both the Government and the Gambling Commission aligned, the days of taking any significant amount of money from any customer are in the past. 

Obviously we would say that. It’s what we do, after all. But we make no apology for reminding operators that muddling along in the hope that the gambling review will be softened or scrapped entirely is not a strategy any longer. Affordability checks are coming. The only question is what precisely they look like.

What will affordability checks in gambling look like?

The short answer is that we don’t know. But we can speculate. I would begin by noticing the central tension between checks that are ‘non-intrusive’ and those that prevent ‘unsustainable losses’.

To do the latter, it is necessary to have a pretty comprehensive understanding of a customer’s finances, an understanding that to my mind must include both a level of confidence around income and savings, and an understanding of outgoings and other financ