Gambling Commission introduces new customer monitoring standards

The UK Gambling Commission announced yesterday that it will be introducing new and more stringent standards for enabling online gamblers to self monitor their activity.

Operators will have until 1st April 2018 to comply with the new standards. By this time online casino customers must be able to:

• directly access 3 months’ worth of account and gambling information; and
• access a further of 12 months worth of activity on request (just don’t show your wife this one);

Operators will also have to:

• ensure account and gambling history provides easy to understand totals for a defined period (for example, the ability to be able to view transaction history for the previous two months…don’t think I’d want to know this, but I guess that’s the point);
• give consumers access to information about their net deposits and withdrawals (most large operators already offer a full deposit and withdrawal history); and
• allow consumers to set financial limits across their entire gambling account as well as individual games (perhaps I’ll be able to set my side-bet limit to $0).

The Commission’s programme director Sharon McNair explained that these regulatory changes are necessary to keep pace with the rapidly evolving industry, now worth £4.5 billion in the UK.

“We are seeing operators developing new gambling products and technologies every day – something that it is vital to the further advancement of the sector.

But as the industry transforms, operators are reminded that we too will continue to adapt our regulation to raise standards across all gambling sectors and enhance the protections available for consumers.”

These additional requirements come on the back of the recently announced GAMSTOP self exclusion scheme which will enable players to ban themselves from playing at all UK licensed gambling sites at once.