UK Regulator Fines Lottoland £760k
The UK Gambling Commission has fined Lottoland £760k for social responsibility and anti-money laundering breaches. The operator was found to have allowed customers to use third-party debit cards on their accounts and didn’t perform adequate checks on affordability.
Regulator Fines Lottoland © Pixabay.
The UK regulator has hit Lottoland, a company that allow punters to bet on the lottery, with a £760,000 fine for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.
The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) found the company had failed to follow the UKGC’s formal guidance on conducting customer interactions. The UKGC investigated EU Lotto, the company behind the lottoland website and found breaches between October 2019 and November 2020.
Issues highlighted by the regulator included a failure to identify if a customer frequently changes their deposit limits on their accounts, a practice that is often a potential marker of harm.
The Commission also ruled that the operator could provide no evidence that they had performed financial and affordability checks on their customers to determine if they were at risk of harm.
The UKGC revealed that Lottoland’s responsible gambling messaging mainly consisted of sending customers an email that outlined what tools were available to them to restrict the time or money spent. The emails didn’t require a response and could simply be ignored by customers.
The regulator also found that rules introduced to prevent money laundering were not followed.
For example, the company had failed to review bank statements that had been provided to ensure the details provided by the customer, such as their addresses, were correct. There were also examples cited by the regulator of customers continuing to gamble despite the operator asking them to produce the source of funds information required.
The UKGC investigation also discovered that Lottoland did not check if debit cards that customers linked to their accounts matched the person’s name, meaning third-party debit cards were able to be used to fund accounts.
Helen Venn, UKGC executive director, said: “This case, like other recent enforcement action, was the result of planned compliance activity.
“All operators should be very aware that we will not hesitate to take firm action against those who fail to meet the high standards we expect for consumers in Britain,”
Lottoland CEO Nigel Birrell said in response that the areas highlighted by UKGC’s investigation were related to “legacy issues” related to former compliance controls, which Birrell claimed had now been resolved.
Birrell said: “Lottoland is fully committed to ensuring the highest standards of compliance, including its AML and social responsibility obligations in all of the jurisdictions in which it operates.
“Lottoland has extensive compliance measures in place, and we are confident that our current policies and processes meet all relevant standards.
“Remedial action taken included significantly increased investment in our compliance function, more than doubling headcount, alongside a host of other initiatives including bringing in third-party support, enhancing training and a review of key policies.
“In addition, we recently committed to building our individual processes into an automated system to improve the system even further,” Birrell added.
In the details of action section on the UKGC’s website, it states the Commission had decided to:
- impose a warning under section 117 (a) of the Gambling Act 2005 (the Act)
- attach additional conditions to the Licensee’s operating licence under section 117(1)(b) of the Act
- impose a financial penalty of £760,000.00.
The regulator did state that the Licensee had cooperated fully with the Commission during their investigation and took corrective steps to prevent a repeat of the failings.
