Hillside (UK Gaming) ENC, which holds a licence for Bet365 bingo and casino products, will pay £343,035. Hillside (UK Sports) ENC, which has a licence to offer betting, will pay £239,085.
As part of the regulatory settlement with Great Britain’s Gambling Commission (GC), the payments will be directed to socially responsible causes.
Social responsibility failings for Bet365
The failings were uncovered during a compliance assessment of Bet365 by the Commission in March 2022.
The regulator listed three social responsibility failings by Bet365.
According to the GC, customer interactions were “not meaningful”. This was because the interactions were frequently not tailored to the specific customer journey or spectrum of harm.
Additionally, an Early Risk Detection System was “not demonstrably effective in understanding the impact of individual interactions” on a customer. This meant it could not understand whether further action was required.
Furthermore, the operator did not ascertain whether a customer had read and understood the information or advice provided.
Anti-money laundering
Four anti-money laundering failings were highlighted. Bet365’s enhanced due diligence and Know Your Customer (KYC) triggers were “ineffective at managing money laundering risk”.
There was a failure to undertake financial sanction checks on new customers before their first deposits. Additionally, there were shortcomings with independent verification checks, with an over-reliance on customers’ annual self-verification of KYC information.
Finally, the procedure document contained inadequate detail about who would be deemed “at risk” for customer risk profiling.
Expectations for Bet365
“The policy and procedural failings may not have been as severe as those at other gambling businesses in recent years. But they were failings nonetheless,” the GC’s executive director of operations, Kay Roberts, said.
“We expect high standards from operators in terms of keeping gambling safe, fair and crime-free. We will always take action to correct any failings. This operator is very aware that a repeat of these failings will result in escalating regulatory action.”
The sanction fell well below some other punishments handed down by the GC in recent times. In January, the Commission fined Gamesys £6.0m over a series of social responsibility and anti-money laundering failings.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/bet365-sanctioned-for-582120-by-gambling-commission-for-multiple-failings/
