UK LEGAL COMMENT
Affordability v. financial risks W
Northridge Law’s Melanie Ellis considers the latest messaging about the current and future requirements for customer affordability assessments.
ith the Government’s recent re-shuffle, we are now on the fourth Secretary of State for (Digital), Culture, Media and Sport since the commencement of the Gambling Act Review.
As Lucy Frazer MP takes the helm and “the coming weeks” waiting for the Review’s White Paper drag on, it is worth considering the latest messaging about the current and future requirements for customer affordability assessments. The Gambling Commission’s CEO Andrew Rhodes spoke
in sessions at the ‘Consumer Protection Zone’ and ‘ICE365 Live’ during the ICE conference in early February. It was interesting to hear him adopt the language used most recently by DCMS of ‘financial risks’, as opposed to ‘affordability’. Even more interesting was Rhodes’ denial that the Commission “has not imposed blanket so-called ‘affordability checks’ or set limits on what we think anyone should be ‘allowed’ to spend”. This very much echoes the
30 MARCH 2023
comments made by Paul Scully MP on 26 January that “‘affordability checks’ is the wrong title for the protections we’re envisaging. That word suggests that the government or Gambling Commission are going to set rules on how much people can ‘afford’ to gamble.” In its 2019-20 Enforcement Report, however, the Commission stated that “Customers wishing to spend more than the national average should be asked to provide information to support a higher affordability trigger such as three months’ payslips, P60s, tax returns or bank statements”. It is difficult to read this as meaning anything other than that customers should only be allowed to spend ‘the national average’ unless they provide affordability evidence, leading to some head scratching at Rhodes’ recent words.
Looking at what happens in practice, many operators who have been through compliance assessments during the
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