No Affordability Checks But Credit Check Company A Possibility Says Minister

At the recent GambleAware conference this week Chris Philp, the DCMS Gambling Minister made a keynote speech which was closely listened to by those operators in the audience to see if he would disclose any details from the forthcoming government gambling review.

In his keynote speech titled ‘Collaboration in the Prevention of Gambling Harms’ the minister said that operators had a responsibility to work with regulators to ensure they “step in” to protect those gamblers in danger of gambling related harm by setting out a “robust system to prevent unaffordable online gambling.”

But the minister said that the government agreed with the UK Gambling Commission in that they should not require an affordability check on all gamblers that play more than £100 by requesting proof of funds such as payslips or bank statements.

The minister said that would be “unwelcome, disruptive and disproportionate to the risks”.

He said:“As minister for Digital, I am really keen to explore the role of technology and available data, such as that held by credit reference agencies, to make these sorts of checks work smoothly in a way that is acceptable to customers.”

“At high levels of gambling, more intrusive checks are appropriate. I also want to be clear that checks based on spend and financial circumstances must supplement rather than supersede all the existing requirements on operators to monitor play data, identify risk and intervene accordingly.”

The mention of working with credit reference agencies was of concern to some, last month the iGaming Post reported that Credit check company Experian had been in discussions with the regulator and government in relation to what the minister mentioned.

Could this be part of the new recommendations to come from government?