UKGC faces growing pressure over UK Gambling affordability checks

The UK Gambling Commission is standing by its Financial Risk Assessments, but the British Horseracing Authority and other industry voices want a clearer explanation of how the regulator got there. For PSPs and operators, the point is simple: if these checks expand as planned, they will shape conversion, compliance workload, and where customers decide to place their bets.

1. The Gambling Commission says its pilot programme showed that roughly 97 percent of customers whose spending exceeded the proposed thresholds could be assessed automatically, without interrupting betting activity. The regulator also said these checks could be completed using available financial data, without asking the customer for more information.
2. On the Commission’s own numbers, fewer than 3 percent of online betting accounts across the industry would fall within scope of Financial Risk Assessments. It also said that only around 1 in every 1,000 betting accounts would need extra checks, such as open banking access or supporting financial documentation.
3. The regulator’s line is that Financial Risk Assessments are meant to improve consumer protection, not impose blanket affordability restrictions across the market. That distinction matters for operators, because the policy is being framed as a targeted control rather than a broad market-wide filter.
4. The British Horseracing Authority is not buying the “trust us, the pilot worked” version of the story and has questioned the decision-making process. It is calling for more transparency on the evidence the Gambling Commission used to support the policy.
5. The wider dispute has been running since the review of the Gambling Act began in 2020, with operators and racing organisations arguing that extra financial assessments could push customers away from regulated betting and create operational pressure for licensed firms.

For high-risk payment providers, the practical issue is not whether the policy sounds tidy on paper. It is whether affordability checks become a routine friction point at the checkout, with knock-on effects for approval rates, user experience, and the volume of activity that stays inside regulated channels.