Ladbrokes Coral to pay £5.9m over AML and social responsibility failings

Ladbrokes Coral has been ordered to pay £5.9m after a UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) investigation revealed “systemic” failings in the GVC-owned firm’s anti-money laundering (AML) and social responsibility policies.

A UKGC investigation between November 2014 and October 2017 found the operator failed to put in place effective AML and problem gambling procedures for seven players.

The investigation revealed that Ladbrokes did not carry out any social responsibility interactions with a customer who lost £98,000 over a two-and-a-half-year period. In this case, the player made 460 deposit attempts, all of which were declined, and had also contacted Ladbrokes to ask to stop receiving promotional material.

In a separate incident, the UKGC found that Ladbrokes was unable to provide evidence that source of funds and adequate affordability checks had been carried out on a player who deposited £140,000 over a four-month period following the opening of an account. UKGC investigators discovered that despite having identified concerns in these areas, Ladbrokes allowed further significant gambling without taking additional steps to verify the source of funds or consider if the customer could afford to spend that amount of money.

In the final incident, investigators found Coral had not asked for evidence of a player’s source of funds, despite the player spending over £1.5m over a period of two years and ten months. Investigations revealed that the player had displayed signs of problem gambling including logging into their account an average of 10 times a day for a month. The player also lost £64,000 in just one month.

Responding to the announcement, GVC CEO Kenny Alexander said the company had identified “historic compliance failures” within areas of Ladbrokes Coral, first brought to light during the acquisition process.

“These historical failings were unacceptable and since the acquisition, I have overseen a systematic review of the enlarged group’s player protection procedures and the individuals responsible for these problems have exited the business.

“I am confident that, we now have in place a robust and industry-leading approach to player protection,” Alexander added.

As part of the regulatory settlement, GVC Holdings will pay £4.8m in lieu of a fine and will divest £1.1m gained from customers as a result of the issues.

GVC has said it will also review the top 50 customers for the years 2015-2017 to consider whether any further failings can be identified, and if so they will divest themselves of profit accordingly.

The operator said it is also committed to making several improvements in these areas – including the overhaul of its responsible gambling and consumer interaction process – together with the retraining of staff and new employee appointments.

GVC confirmed its recent “Changing for the Bettor” responsible gambling strategy, first launched in January, arose directly from the issues identified in the UKGC investigation and resultant procedural changes. It said the settlement payment was already accounted for in its recent financial statements.