888 got hit with a £9.4 million fine, the third highest in the history of British gambling regulation, over multiple failings that led to customers racking up huge losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The regulator said 888 was not properly identifying customers who were at risk of harm because it did not carry out financial checks until they had deposited £40,000.

In a press release, the Gambling Commission highlighted a series of transgressions that it warned could force it to consider 888’s suitability to hold a licence to operate in Great Britain.

- not effectively identifying players at risk of harm because their policies determined financial checks should be carried out after a customer had deposited £40,000
- not carrying out a customer interaction with a customer who lost £37,000 in a six week period during the Covid-19 pandemic
- not taking into account the Commission’s formal guidance on customer interaction
- giving a customer they knew was an NHS worker earning £1,400 a month a monthly deposit cap of £1,300
- most of the interactions conducted predominately consisted of an email just detailing the responsible gambling tools and did not require a customer response
- during a Commission assessment there was no evidence of the operator proactively placing restrictions on accounts where social responsibility concerns were raised
- not ensuring that if a customer has multiple accounts those accounts are managed for customer interaction holistically and financial limits can be implemented across all accounts. In one example, a customer had one of his 11 accounts restricted because of Source of Funds (SOF) concerns, but he was allowed to open three more accounts and continue gambling.
From The Guardian:

In another case, 888 placed a deposit cap of £1,300 a month on the account of an NHS worker whom it knew earned £1,400 a month.

An audit carried out in October 2020 found that most of the company’s social responsibility interactions with customers consisted of a single email describing the available responsible gambling tools and did not involve customer interaction.

Andrew Rhodes, the chief executive of the Gambling Commission, pointed out that this was 888’s second big fine, after it was hit with a £7.8m penalty in 2017, a record at the time.

“The circumstances of the last enforcement action may be different but both cases involve failing consumers – and this is something that is not acceptable,” said Rhodes.

“Today’s fine is one of our largest to date, and all should be clear that if there is a repeat of the failures at 888 then we have to seriously consider the suitability of the operator to uphold the licensing objectives and keep gambling safe and crime-free.

“Consumers in Britain deserve to know that when they gamble, they are participating in a leisure activity where operators play their part in keeping them safe and are carrying out checks to ensure money is crime-free.”
Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/...ds-in-pandemic