If you deposit over £500 per month at a UK online casino, you will be subject to a mandatory affordability check. Casinoplusbonus investigates. (Images by karma-genie on Vecteezy)
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The title of this latest news piece spells the beginning of the introduction of mandatory affordability checks for all online gambling in the UK.
We knew it was coming, and as of 30 August 2024, the pilot had begun.
Over the past year, there has been much debate for and against the affordability checks introduced as part of the UK’s Gambling Act 2005 White Paper reform. Now, the regime is officially in action.
Pilot Only Affects Deposits Over £500 Monthly
For those of you playing at online casinos in the UK, you may not notice the affordability checks are in progress.
The threshold to trigger a check is once your monthly deposits to any online gambling platform reaches or exceeds £500.
For me, that’s one heck of a pilot. With news of the affordability checks coming, many online casinos will have already had plenty of time to set up IT infrastructure and train employees.
However, a £500 threshold seems very low for a pilot. It looks like UK online casinos are going to have their work cut out for them over the next six months!
Affordability checks are being put in place to stop people from ruining families and businesses through over gambling. However, the larger issue at play here is that many players feel these checks are invasive.
How will Checks Trigger
Failure to produce the correct documentation could result in the suspension of your UK gambling account.
- As soon as your deposits to a UK online casino reach £500, the casino will automatically request you show proof of earnings.
- If you cannot provide this information, under the UKGC laws, the casino must suspend your account.
The dangers for the UK gambling market: The reason the UKGC is running an affordability check pilot is because UK players are not happy about the invasiveness of these checks. In a YouGov survey 82% believe checks will fuel blackmarket gambling.
How Many UK Gamblers Will the £500 Affordability Checks Affect?
As the Casinoplusbonus teams have been closely following affordability checks, we have some facts and figures at hand.
- 19.4 million people gamble in the UK
- We don’t know how many people gamble more than £500 per month as the only stat we have is that 7.7 million spend more than £50 per month.
- Source: Gambling White Paper Reactions
- Going by these figures, it could be less than 3%. In an earlier Casinoplusbonus EN report, the government and UKG predicted that affordability checks would affect only 3% of gamblers in the UK.
| Percentage Vs Monthly Spend | No. of People |
|---|---|
| 23.4% spend under £5 | 4.5 million |
| 22.2% spend between £5 and £15 | 4.3 million |
| 14.7% spend between £15 and £50 | 2.9 million |
| 39.7% Spend more than £50 | 7.7 million |
That less than 3% statistic came from a news report published on 10 September 2023 – UKGC White Paper Clarification for Affordability Checks.
What Happened to the Originally Planned £125 Trigger?
Originally, the plan was that affordability checks were to monitor two key thresholds:
- Moderate Levels: Net losses of £125 per month or £500 per year.
- Binge Levels: Net losses of £1,000 within a single day or £2,000 over 90 days.
We still don’t know if the planned initial £125 loss trigger will become law, and it seems £500 per year has become per month. At this time, the UKGC has decided to simply run a pilot to see how UK players react to having to fulfil affordability checks. We did publish an earlier report on 19 January 2024 this year after the UKGC said it would ‘Take a Soft Approach to Affordability Checks‘.
If players reject this higher limit of £500 worth of deposits, then I would say the UKGC and the UK government will need to come up with another solution.
In an earlier news report covering multiple changes to the UK Gambling Act, I noted the £125 affordability checks as risky. The reason I wrote risky is because I do feel that some players are fed up with Big Brother watching.
You can read the highlight box titled ‘The Current UK White Paper Release Proposals’ from my UK Government White Paper Released news report. This box gives my expert opinion as a person who gambles at UK casinos.
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