UK LEGAL


What’s next for financial risk assessments?


Northridge Law’s Melanie Ellis turns – once again – to the deeper implications of the 2023 Gambling Act White Paper.


F


ollowing the (previous) Government’s Gambling Act White Paper in April 2023, the Gambling Commission designed two types of financial assessments for remote gambling customers hitting financial triggers: financial vulnerability checks (to identify financially vulnerable customers) and financial risk assessments (to address binge gambling and significant unaffordable gambling losses over time), both to be implemented through the LCCP.


So far, these proposals apply only to the remote sector, but in the White Paper the Government indicated that in due course it wanted to “explore the use of frictionless


22 JUNE 2026


financial risk checks where appropriate in land-based settings to benefit operators and help protect customers”.


While the Gambling Commission’s “light touch” financial vulnerability checks have been in place since August 2024, the financial risk assessments (“FRAs”) have been subject to a long pilot phase and, following a Commission board meeting on 22 May, their future remains uncertain. Perhaps influenced by a warning from the Betting and Gaming Council that implementing FRAs now would be “disproportionate and open to legal challenge”, the Commission decided to postpone a formal decision on the


introduction of FRAs to allow further time to assess the trial data.


WHAT WOULD FINANCIAL RISK ASSESSMENTS INVOLVE? The trigger thresholds for FRAs, should they come into effect, has yet to be confirmed, but the original proposal was for a check when customers incurred net losses of £1,000 in a 24-hour period or £2,000 in a 90 day period (halved for under 25s). The operator would need to review a financial risk assessment provided by a credit reference agency which would take into account the information held by that


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