The Gambling Commission is beginning a staged rollout of financial risk assessments for online gamblers, starting with over-25s at the largest betting firms whose spending exceeds £5,000 in a rolling 24-hour period. The regulator said the aim is to identify customers in financial difficulty, not to impose routine affordability checks.
According to the commission, the assessments will rely on data held by credit reference agencies, will be frictionless for almost everyone who triggers them and will not affect a customer’s credit score. It said the process should be document-free for those who do need checks.
The wider framework the commission announced also sets checks at more than £1,000 in 24 hours or £3,000 over 90 days, with lower triggers for under-25s. It said the first stage will affect less than 0.5% of customers and will be rolled out this summer.
Sarah Gardner, the acting chief executive, said the vast majority of customers would never need an assessment. She said the approach would allow support for high-spending customers in financial difficulty while reducing friction for everyone else.
The commission said it has evidence that some high-spending customers are experiencing financial difficulties but are not being identified or supported by operators. It also said such customers were between two and four times more likely to have a debt management plan, and between two and five times more likely to have a default in the previous 12 months, than consumers in the wider population.
The regulator also said it was still seeing enforcement failures, citing one case in which a customer deposited £25,000 in 25 days before any interaction took place. In its telling, the new checks are meant to catch patterns like that earlier.
The move follows a long pilot programme. In May 2025, the commission said stage two involved about 1.7 million assessments across three credit reference agencies, covering roughly 860,000 accounts, and that 97% could be completed frictionlessly.
It said stage one had been about 95% frictionless and stage two had improved to 97%, while the proportion of assessments that were not matched fell from 5% to 3%. The commission also said under-25s were more likely to be unmatched than people aged 25 and over.
In an April update, the commission said it was still analysing data from last year’s pilot and its further analysis phase. It said current approaches used by operators to identify financial difficulties were a patchwork, and that its casework had found too many examples of high-spending customers not receiving support.
The broader policy sits inside the Gambling Act 2005’s objective of protecting children and vulnerable people, according to the commission’s consultation background paper. That paper said the government and regulator had been considering financial vulnerability checks and financial risk assessments to judge whether online gambling might be harmful in light of a customer’s financial circumstances.
The same background paper said the commission had previously proposed lighter checks at £125 in net losses over 30 days or £500 over 365 days, reaching about 20% of accounts. It also set out enhanced assessments at £1,000 over 24 hours or £2,000 over 90 days, with lower triggers for 18- to 24-year-olds.
The commission has said the assessments are not live and that no consumer was affected during the pilot. It also said the previous government had identified financial risk assessments as the best way to bring a frictionless and consistent method to market, and that the current government supports them.
Industry groups remain opposed. The Betting and Gaming Council said it was disappointed and frustrated, warned that the policy could drive some customers to the black market and argued that central questions about reliability, consumer impact and practical operation were still unresolved.
The British Horseracing Authority also criticised the plan, saying it would subject racing bettors to unwarranted levels of intrusion. Gambling Minister Baroness Twycross said the assessments must work for consumers, operators and the wider ecosystem.
