The Gambling Commission will publish the dataset, evidence base and methodology behind its decision to introduce financial risk assessments (FRAs) alongside its full consultation response in the autumn, acting chief executive Sarah Gardner has told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Gardner set out the timing in a letter dated 22 July, answering five questions the committee put to the regulator on 10 July. Those questions followed the Commission’s announcement on 7 July that it would implement FRAs through a staged rollout, a decision published ahead of the consultation response that supports it.
Some of the material will be aggregated or summarised where it is commercially sensitive, Gardner said.
“We plan to issue the consultation response in the Autumn which will set out this information, consistent with our usual practice of explaining our decisions in full.”
Why the evidence has been held back
Gardner tied the delay to the implementation timetable. The Commission is setting up implementation groups over the summer and wants the consultation response shaped by those discussions before it is published.
She also acknowledged that announcing a decision before publishing the response departs from how the regulator normally works.
“An announcement of a regulatory policy decision of this nature before the full consultation response is published is outside our normal process. The decision to do so was taken in the interests of transparency and due to the significant interest from stakeholders.”
The letter gives no publication date beyond “the autumn” and does not say which figures will be aggregated rather than released in full. For operators building compliance budgets against a staged rollout, that leaves the thresholds visible but the reasoning behind them unpublished for several more months.
Fewer than 3% of customers will need an assessment
Gardner told the committee that only the highest-spending consumers, fewer than the top 3%, will require an FRA. Of the accounts that are assessed, 97% are expected to clear the check without friction, against the 80% estimate set out in the 2023 Gambling Act Review white paper, High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age.
The Commission’s case for the policy rests on pilot findings. High-spending customers are between two and four times more likely to hold a debt management plan, and between two and five times more likely to have defaulted in the previous 12 months, than consumers in the wider population. Gardner said those customers are not currently identified by operators and may keep receiving marketing and promotional offers while in financial difficulty.
She was careful to limit the claim on document checks. FRAs cannot remove them, because operators still have anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, identity verification and fraud obligations that apply regardless of financial risk. The expectation is a reduction for high-spending customers as a group. The committee had asked for a numerical estimate of how many recreational bettors would be affected. The answer it received is directional.
The policy lands on a market the Commission already tracks closely through its operator returns and market data, which will now sit alongside credit reference agency data in the assessment process.
Racing sits outside the implementation groups
Membership of the implementation groups is limited to the organisations delivering the policy: gambling businesses and credit reference agencies. Their remit covers contracts, integration systems, data security and guidance on embedding FRAs into operator processes. Some discussions will be held individually to protect commercially sensitive information. The Commission will also engage the Credit Information Governance Body on credit data governance.
Racing bodies are outside that structure. The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) was briefed on 7 July at the same time as the regulated gambling industry, received a written follow-up the same day with an offer of a meeting, and has now accepted after the Commission repeated the offer.
Gardner pushed back on the criticism directly.
“I was surprised and disappointed to hear of claims that the Commission has failed to engage with this community and I do not think that such claims are borne out by the facts.”
Her letter lists the engagement record: a chief executive level meeting with the BHA in April 2026, meetings with the Sports Gambling Strategy Group and the Horserace Betting Levy Board, correspondence with BHA chairs and racecourse groups, and racecourse visits taking in the Jockey Club, the Arena Racing Company and the Racecourse Association. What the letter does not set out is a date for the BHA meeting, or the mechanism by which racing’s views will feed into implementation decisions taken inside groups it does not sit on.
What happens next
The implementation groups form over the summer and will develop the operator guidance. The consultation response, with the supporting data, follows in the autumn, and it is the document that will show whether the thresholds announced on 7 July hold up against the pilot evidence. Until then, the industry is preparing for a policy whose regulatory justification has been described but not published. Gardner copied the letter to Baroness Twycross, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Source: Gambling Commission
