SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has notified that Rank Digital Gaming and Annexio Limited have agreed to pay a regulatory settlement totalling £1.3 million.
The settlements are a result of separate investigations carried out by the Commission that reported social responsibility failures found throughout the operators’ domains.
Rank Digital the operating company of grosvenorcasino.com, meccabingo.com meccagames.com and bellacasino.com, has agreed to a £700,557 regulatory settlement for its social reasonability failings.
The Commission’s investigation reported that between October 2019 to February 2021, Rank Digital held key failings on its duties related to customer interaction, identification and self-exclusion.
LCCP rules require operators to treat the issues outlined as their own policies and practices to identify and implement improvements in respect of the management of customers’ accounts.
Rank Digital admitted failings in relation to being overly reliant on its £1,000 30-day loss limit threshold procedure and that certain safer gambling triggers were not effective at ‘stopping new customers depositing at a high frequency’.
The operator further admitted to manual faults following the platform migrations of bellacasino.com and meccagames.com, that had hindered the brands self-exclusion safeguards.
Trading as Lottogo.com, Annexio will pay a £612,000 regulatory settlement in relation to social responsibility and money laundering failures
An investigation of Annexio revealed that between October 2019 and November 2021, the operator maintained deficiencies in its customer interaction, AML procedures and event reporting.
Annexio has admitted to investigation findings that its customer due diligence (“CDD”) and enhanced due diligence (“EDD”) were carried out in a delayed manner that enabled customers to gamble significant sums of money before limits were applied to accounts.
Furthermore, the operator accepted that its AML events were not adequality reported as money laundering and terrorist financing (MLTF) risks.
The Commission’s investigative teams reported that both operators had provided a timely disclosure of their failings and had moved to implement actions remedying breaches. Furthermore, admitting their failures, Rank Digital and Annexio were co-operative throughout their investigative dealings with the Commission
Helen Venn, Gambling Commission executive director, said: “We expect high standards from operators to ensure gambling in Britain is safe and crime-free. Those businesses that fail to meet these standards will find themselves facing costly regulatory action.”
