Gambling Commission confirms phased launch of Financial Risk Assessments for high-spend UK players

The Gambling Commission has set out a phased rollout of Financial Risk Assessments (FRAs) for customers with high gambling spend, starting with the biggest operators and the most extreme spend patterns. For PSPs and acquirers in UK gambling, the practical point is simple: deposit thresholds are becoming the trigger point for affordability-style checks, and the regime is moving from theory to something operators will have to wire into their onboarding and monitoring flows.

1. The first stage will target players whose net deposits exceed £5,000 within a rolling 24-hour period, which the commission says covers only 0.5% of UK customers. For younger customers and other high-risk demographics, stage one starts at £2,500 within 24 hours.
2. Once FRAs are fully operational, they will be triggered for players aged 25 and over at net deposits exceeding £1,000 in 24 hours or £3,000 within a rolling 90-day period. For those under 25, the thresholds will be £750 in 24 hours or £2,000 within a rolling 90-day period.
3. This is a shift from the 2023 white paper’s earlier proposal, which was based on a £2,000 loss over 90 days. The commission is now framing the regime around net deposits and rolling windows, which matters because that is a different operational question for operators and their payment stack.
4. The stage-one timetable will be finalised after consultation with industry participants and stakeholders, and implementation groups will be formed over the summer to refine assessment criteria and guidance. The regulator also said the checks will be “frictionless” and will not affect customers’ credit scores.
5. In the FRA pilot, conducted between August 2025 and finalised earlier this year, 97% of customers who exceeded the designated spend thresholds could be assessed through CRA data, above the 80% estimate in the white paper. During the pilot, additional affordability checks were triggered at £500 in net monthly deposits, with a second phase from February 2025 lowering that threshold to £150 or above.

The commission said high-spending customers are between two and four times more likely to have a debt management plan, and between two and five times more likely to have a credit default in the previous year than the general population. It also said a grace period will apply during the early stages of implementation, with no enforcement action taken against operators that fail to act following an FRA outcome.