The has fined with a penalty of £6.1 million after failing a compliance assessment last March. This followed a number of repeated regulatory failures by the operator. In 2019 regulatory failures were reported with a fine of  £2.2 million followed but a fine of £3.4 million in 2021.

Failure to interact appropriately with customers

The regulator conducted a money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment as proper policies and procedures were not implemented by Intouch to address the risk factors. According to the assessment, the company failed to interact appropriately with high risk customers. An incident was reported where a customer who was flagged for erratic play patterns was followed up by the company after a lapse of seven weeks. Another report stated that the operator also failed to verify a customer’s monthly earnings despite being flagged as a high risk customer.

UK Gambling Commission

, executive director of operations at the UKGC, said: “Considering this operator’s history of failings we expected to see significant improvement when we carried out our planned compliance assessment. Disappointingly, although many improvements had been made, there was still more to do. This £6.1m fine shows that we will take escalating enforcement action where failures are repeated and all licensees should be acutely aware of this,” she added.

Background