UKGC Update Customer Care Duties

Over the past few years, the UK Gambling Commission has been one of the most active leading change in the space from changing payment methods to the mandatory requirement of Gamstop incentives for all services operating with a UK license. More recent changes also include adjustments to advertising permissions as services are now longer allowed to use influencers or celebrities in their advertising packages. Another big set of changes has recently been announced however as the UKGC has issued a new customer care duties rulebook as it looks to bring more guidance to help manage players most at risk.

The new guidance is expected to come into force on September 12th with a whole list of criteria that has to be met – the guidance has changed due to “continued failings by licensed operators” to identify and intervene with players who are considered at risk – this could be players who are spending too much time or too much money on the game, or identifying underage players ahead of time – as the UKGC continues to prepare what its exact guidelines will be, it is known that operators will be required to flag different indicators and act within a timely manner.

The Chief Exec Andrew Rhodes had also gone on to state that “time and time again our enforcement cases show that some operators are still not doing enough to prevent gambling harm” and that these rules have followed extensive consultation hoping to also make expectations more explicit too. Other recent changes have also provided change that made the amount of time spent playing more transparent particularly with slots games and other tools that would identify where or not players were overplaying, but with these measures still being a recent addition it seems more work is needed here.

The expectation is for any potential gambling harms to be tackled fast and with effective action, with the UKGC going on to also state they will not hesitate to enact tough penalties on operators who fail to do so – once more these penalties have yet to be revealed but the UKGC has been known to crack down hard on those that haven’t stuck to the regulations so it looks as if there’s a lot of change still to come and some adjustments that could make any failings not yet public by operators more transparent too.