SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The Football Pools, one of the UK’s oldest legacy betting companies, has been charged £375,000 by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC).
As in most cases of UKGC enforcement actions, the operator was found to have failed to meet the social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) conditions of its licence between September 2022 and August 2023.
The firm has agreed to pay £375,000 in a settlement with the Commission, effectively paying a fee to the regulator to prevent any further regulatory enforcement action. The £375,000 sum will go to social responsibility causes, the Commission says.
The UKGC’s investigation found a number of areas for improvement in the Pools’ AML policy. The policy was found to be over-reliant on financial triggers to identify money laundering risks, hard stops were not automatically applied when AML thresholds were reached, and manual reviews ‘did not always occur promptly’.
Internal systems for identifying problem gambling were also deemed ineffective, and the UKGC’s investigation found ‘no evidence of sufficient evaluation of individual customers’ interactions’.
Financial triggers were raised again in the UKGC’s assessment of the Pools’ safer gambling policy. The Commission asserts that safer gambling risk profiles should have been completed when financial triggers were reached, but had actually been created months later.
John Pierce, Commission Director of Enforcement, said: “This case demonstrates that the Licensee’s approach to anti-money laundering risk profiling and monitoring was insufficient, allowing high-risk customers to continue gambling before completing necessary enhanced due diligence checks.
“In addition, the Licensee was over-reliant on financial alerts that whilst preventing significant losses meant it failed to engage in a timely manner with some customers who were potentially experiencing other markers of gambling-related harm such as time spent gambling and high velocity spend.
“While it is recognised that necessary improvements have been made by the Licensee following the completion of the compliance assessment, the Commission will take further action if these standards are not maintained.”
The Commission has reminded operators of the need to have effective processes in place and to assess policies and controls around both SG and AML. Firms have been reminded to fully scrutinise all customers’ information, act quickly when markers of harm or criminality are reached, and ensure the types of behaviour which trigger customer interactions are logged.
The charge issued to the Pools comes just a week after another Commission investigation concluded with a penalty issued to Corbett Bookmakers, a large independent chain of betting shops mainly located in Wales and North West England. Like the Pools, Corbett was found to have breached AML and SG licensing conditions.
