UKGC’s Rhodes Updates On Financial Risk Assessments Pilot
UK regulator the Gambling Commission (UKGC) has offered an update on its pilot of new financial risk assessments, which are not taking place in a live environment.
Financial risk assessment pilots are ongoing at UKGC. © WOKANDAPIX, Pixabay
Key Facts:
- Pilot aims to see how financial risk assessments may be used to support vulnerable customers
- The UKGC stressed in a statement that the pilot is not taking place in a live environment
- Over 530,000 assessments across three credit reference agencies have been conducted in the first phase
- NatCen is working as UKGC’s evaluation partner on the pilot
The pilot was underway last August, and UKGC has given insight into the progress made so far.
It said phase one has included more than 530,000 assessments across three credit reference agencies being conducted.
UKGC stressed that the financial risk assessment pilot is not taking place in a live environment, so betting site customers are not concerned about their data being used.
The regulator also noted financial risk assessments are not the same as affordability checks, as this is not something that comes under the remit of the Gambling Commission.
Practical Implementation Issues
Helen Rhodes, UKGC’s director of major policy projects, said the aim of the pilot is to see “how financial risk assessments might work in practice”.
She said the pilot is proving “worthwhile” so far as UKGC looks into what “practical implementation issues” could arise through the assessments.
In a statement, Rhodes said: “Taking a staged approach to the pilot means that issues identified in the first stage can be explored further, such as data consistency across credit reference agencies where appropriate and data accuracy from operators.”
“A key part of our work will also be to further support operators to consider how financial risk assessments could be put together with other information about indicators of harm which the gambling businesses already have, to support customers in as frictionless a manner as possible.”
NatCen has been brought on board as UKGC’s evaluation partner for this pilot scheme.
Frictionless Checks
Details revealed by UKGC showed how the financial risk assessments work in practice.
It said that of the over half a million assessments carried out in the pilot so far, 95% were matched in this stage.
The vast majority – 92% – were able to get a full assessment, while 3% had what the UKGC described as a “thin file”, within which there was no adverse information to be found.
A frictionless assessment was not possible in the remaining 5% of cases in the trial to date.
UKGC said 4% of them were due to the fact the customer was not able to be identified by the credit reference agency.
The remaining 1% hit the buffers because of data issues, with UKGC explaining this could be due to duplications or invalid fields provided by the gambling operators.
Findings released by UKGC are for the first stage of the trial only, and the regulator said it is too early to draw any firm conclusions.
However, a white paper previously estimated that 80% of accounts referred for an assessment would be matched, with 20% not.
