The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has fined Football Pools Limited £375,000 after breaches of anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility (SR) rules.
AML has been a recurring theme in the UKGC’s recent activity. The regulator recently highlighted that operators should be vigilant as more payment providers start to accept digital currencies, despite the country having no regulated crypto sportsbooks
The latest enforcement comes after an investigation of issues that occurred between September 2022 and August 2023 involving Football Pools’ remote betting operations. The regulator has made it clear that traditional pool betting was not impacted.
According to the Commission, the company “failed to comply with paragraphs 2 and 3 of Licence Condition 12.1.1,” the section that mandates appropriate and effective money laundering controls.
Football Pools was found to have AML procedures that relied too heavily on financial triggers to detect risky behavior. In addition, manual intervention was slow in forthcoming, further amplifying the risk. The ruling reads: “Manual reviews did not always occur promptly, which means that hard stops were not put in place in a timely manner, if at all.”
Furthermore, the company failed to adequately profile customers who were exhibiting behaviors that would consider them high-risk from an AML perspective. “Risk profiles were not completed for a significant period (on average 25 days after the financial trigger was hit).”
Last month, Aspire Global also fell foul in a similar manner and was fined £1.4 million after the UKGC’s investigation.
In addition to AML breaches, Football Pools was also found to have multiple failures in social responsibility. Under UKGC rules, operators are required to identify and respond to customers who are showing signs of gambling-related harm.
“There were examples where customers were not identified for Safer Gambling interactions due to ineffective internal systems,” reads the ruling.
A specific example shows that internal systems disproportionately on high rollers, neglecting other standard flags for gambling-related harm. The example cited is: “One customer deposited circa £4,100 in two weeks after signing up but was not identified for a safer gambling interaction despite reaching a financial alert.”
Other failures included lackluster profiling (due to staff shortages), interacting with customers who had opted out of marketing, ineffective use of gambling-related harm indicators such as session length and bet velocity, and delays in issuing responsible gambling warnings.
The UKGC has ordered the company to pay £375,000 in lieu of a financial penalty, all of which will be directed to socially responsible causes. Football Pools will also cover the Commission’s investigation costs.
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