UKGC issues update on financial risk assessment pilot
The Gambling Commission has released an update on its ongoing financial risk assessment pilot, following the completion of its first phase. Written by Helen Rhodes, Director of Major Policy Projects, the report outlines preliminary findings so far
Financial risk assessments are a suggested method of detecting and assisting high-spending remote gamblers experiencing financial troubles. The Gambling Commission has no standards for affordability checks and is not proposing any, therefore this is not the same as "affordability checks."
A far more focused method of identifying clients who could be financially susceptible would be financial risk assessments. If they were added in the future, they wouldn't have an impact on a customer's credit score.
The update's main points are that:
- Before deciding whether and how to implement financial risk assessments, the Commission is carefully testing them to see how they may be used to assist financially vulnerable consumers. There is no live environment for the pilot.
- In this initial phase, about 530,000 evaluations were carried out for around 300,000 accounts from a historical year period across three credit reference agencies. This does not represent the number of accounts that may be evaluated if the tests were implemented in a live setting.
- At this point, about 95% of evaluations matched, 92% of comprehensive assessments, and 3% of "thin files," which included no unfavorable information. This indicates that a seamless evaluation was feasible in these situations.
- About 5% of these evaluations were not matched at this point, with 4% occurring because the credit reference agency was unable to identify the consumer and 1% due to data problems, such as duplicates or incorrect information supplied by the gaming operators. In these situations, a frictionless evaluation was not feasible.
