UKGC issues “call to action” in enforcement report

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has today published an enforcement report, in light of action it has taken against operators in the past year.

Just last week 32Red were ordered to pay a £2m penalty package, for failing to protect a consumer from gambling-related harm and money laundering failures, following similar such actions against LeoVegas (fined £600,000 for self exclusion and ad failures) and William Hill (handed a £6.2m penalty package for social responsibility and money laundering failures).

The report seeks to offer guidance to operators in order to strengthen strategies surrounding fair, safe and crime free gambling, with overall enforcement efforts seeking to minimise risks to licensing objectives, and put consumers interests first, as well as opening up a more fluid path of communication with the regulator.

Neil McArthur, Chief Executive of the UKGC, said: “We want operators to pay attention to the lessons set out in this report. We want them to focus on ways to make gambling fairer and safer for consumers in Great Britain.

“We also want gambling businesses to collaborate and to invest the same amount of resources into data, technology and research into building better protections for consumers, as they do to creating new products, or advertising and marketing campaigns.

“This is a call to action to the leaders of operators to set the tone from the top, to lead a culture of compliance that puts doing the right thing for your customers first, and to strive to continuously raise standards for consumers.”

The report is split into a number of key sections, namely anti-money laundering, customer interaction, self-exclusion, unfair terms and practices, marketing and advertising and illegal gambling, within which the UKGC states it has been most active during the past year.

In the broken down topics the UKGC details four key aims of each:

• Provide an overview of the enforcement work in which we have been engaged.
  
• Highlight areas of regulatory concern within the industry.
  
• Bring together lessons that are frequently published in our public decision notices.
  
• Help those within the industry raise standards and improve overall regulatory
  compliance.