Lottoland hit with £760k UKGC fine for social responsibility and AML breaches

Lottoland has been ordered to pay a £760,000 fine after a Gambling Commission (UKGC) investigation unveiled social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failures. Operating company EU Lotto – which powers the lottoland.co.uk website – also received a formal warning for the breaches which occurred between October 2019 and November 2020. During that period, Lottoland neglected to take into account the UKGC’s formal guidance on conducting customer interactions. For example, the Gibraltar-based operator failed to identify customers frequently changing their deposit limits as a potential marker of harm. The regulator also ruled there was no evidence of suitable financial and affordability assessments being conducted by the company to identify whether a customer was at risk of harm. According to the UKGC investigation, Lottoland’s customer interactions predominately consisted of emails outlining the RG tools available, although these did not require a response from the end user. Elsewhere, AML shortcomings included failing to review bank statements provided by customers to verify their address and failing to restrict customer accounts following source of funds requests. The UKGC also discovered that Lottoland allowed customers to register third-party debit cards to their accounts despite the fact their name did not match the customer’s. UKGC executive director Helen Venn 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,” she added. In response, Lottoland CEO Nigel Birrell said the UKGC enforcement action was related to “legacy issues” around former compliance controls which have now been addressed.

He said: “Lottoland is fully committed to ensuring the highest standards of compliance, including its AML and social responsibility obligations in all of the jurisdictions in which it operates. “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,” he added.