British Gambling Commission to publish full Financial Risk Assessments evidence in autumn

The UK Gambling Commission says it will publish the full evidence, data and methodology behind its decision to move ahead with Financial Risk Assessments (FRAs) for gambling. For PSPs and operators, the useful bit is not the policy headline itself but the implementation timeline: the regulator is still shaping how the checks will actually work, and that matters for onboarding, affordability logic and data-sharing flows.

1. The Commission told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that acting CEO Sarah Gardner will release the supporting material in the autumn. That material is meant to cover the evidence base the regulator used after last year’s pilot project, which critics had said should have been published before the decision to proceed.
2. FRAs will be rolled out in two stages. In the first stage, the largest gambling operators will carry out assessments when there is a £5,000 net deposit in a rolling 24-hour period. In the second phase, FRAs become mandatory for over-25s with net deposits above £1,000 in a rolling 24-hour period or £3,000 over a rolling 90-day period. For under-25s, the thresholds are £750 or £2,000 respectively.
3. Gardner said the delay in publishing the consultation response was driven by the implementation timetable. The Commission wants to hold consultations with implementation groups over the summer, and those groups include gambling operators and credit reference agencies. In other words, the regulator wants the mechanics settled with the people who will actually have to run them.
4. The committee also challenged the Commission over complaints from the gambling and horseracing sector that stakeholders had been left out of the conversation. The British Horseracing Authority has been one of the loudest critics, arguing that FRAs could discourage high-spending horse bettors.
5. The Commission confirmed that the horse racing industry will not be part of the implementation groups because it will not be involved in implementing the measure. Gardner said the regulator will still engage with racing separately through individual meetings, citing the “symbiotic relationship” between racing and betting and shared interests in integrity and tackling illegal gambling.

For high-risk payment providers, the practical signal is that the UK is still moving from policy to operating model. Until the Commission publishes the full evidence and the consultation response in autumn, the detail that matters for transaction monitoring, data requests and decisioning thresholds is still being written.