UKGC to progress risk assessment for gambling

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has received approval from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to progress its single customer view (SCV) and financial risk assessment projects.

This result comes in lieu of the ICO publishing an open letter that states data protection laws do not prevent gambling companies from conducting financial risk assessments on customers.

Furthermore, credit reference agencies may share personal information with gambling operators as long as it is done “transparently and proportionately”.

The UKGC’s projects

The ICO also stated that it expects gambling operators to have robust safeguards in place for analysing and securely storing data received from credit reference agencies.

As a result, the Gambling Commission will now consult with gambling operators regarding two types of financial risk checks.

These will include, basic checks for online gamblers with moderate spending levels and then more enhanced checks for gamblers who spend far more and in doing so incur more harm.

The ICO expects that these checks be necessary for approximately 20 per cent of accounts that spend moderately and 3 per cent for those meeting the requirements for an enhanced check.

Data protection exemption

The ICO suggested that lenders and other affected agencies should review their General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) accountability frameworks with the express intent to:

“Ensure these reflected the personal data processing required by the financial risk checks.”

This letter will hopefully serve as a clarification to UK Finance addressing the data protection-related allowances afforded to firms undertaking financial risk assessments.

ICO’s report

In addition to this letter, the ICO published a report on the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) regarding its “regulatory sandbox” with the intention of exploring data-sharing across gambling operators and identifying markers of harm. These are known as either SCV or GamProtect.

The report’s findings were extremely positive stating that:

“This sandbox participation has demonstrated that organisations can work together collaboratively and positively to consider and overcome the perceived challenges posed by data protection law.”

Several market leaders also came out in support of this report expressing an eagerness co-design and trial a new solution.

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