Lottoland Operator fined £760,000 by Gambling Commission

The failings in question occurred between October 2019 and November 2020, and the Commission has also issued the operator with a formal warning.

With regards to social responsibility, issues included failure to flag customers frequently changing deposit limits as harmful, lack of adequate financial and affordability assessments for players, and insufficient interaction with at-risk players.

The anti-money laundering failings consisted of inadequate analysis of customer bank statements to verify an address, not restricting customer accounts following a source of funds request and allowing customers to register third-party debit cards to their account.

EU Lotto was also said to have relied too heavily on “ineffective” threshold triggers for financial risk. The Commission plans to launch a consultation on industry-wide triggers in the near future. 

Helen Venn, Commission 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.”

The Commission recently fined Rank-owned Kittybingo and Regalwins operator Daub Alderney £5.8m for similar failings in social responsibility and anti-money laundering.

Lottoland CEO Nigel Birrell said: “Lottoland is fully committed to ensuring the highest standards of compliance, including its anti-money laundering and social responsibility obligations in all of the jurisdictions in which it operates.

“The Gambling Commission fine was related to legacy issues around some of our compliance controls which have now been addressed. 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. ”