William Hill to pay record £19.2m to UKGC over "widespread and alarming" regulatory breaches

William Hill has agreed to pay a record £19.2m regulatory settlement to the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) following an investigation which revealed social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failures.

WHG (International), Mr Green Limited and William Hill Organisation have all been found to have “widespread and alarming” failures, according the UKGC CEO Andrew Rhodes.

Breaking the record payment down, WHG, which runs williamhill.com, will pay £12.5m while the group’s Mr Green subsidiary will pay £3.7m.

William Hill Organisation, which is responsible for the group’s 1,344 retail premises across the UK, will pay £3m.

Rhodes said that when the investigation into Hills began, the failings were of such a nature that the regulator gave “serious consideration” to a licence suspension.

However, Hills swiftly implemented changes across its business, according to the UKGC, which instead has resulted in the commission’s largest ever regulatory settlement payment.

Looking into the specific failings, the UKGC established that Hills failed to have sufficient controls in place to protect new customers and protect those at-risk from high velocity spend.

In one instance, a customer was allowed to open a new account and spend £23,000 in 20 minutes without any checks.

Similarly, one customer was allowed to open an account and spend £18,000 in 24 hours without checks and another was allowed to spend £32,500 over two days with the group’s Mr Green brand.

One customer using the Mr Green brand lost £14,902 in just 70 minutes after Hills failed to carry out checks at an early stage of the customer journey.

The group was also found to have allowed customers to continue to lose large amounts of money without intervening.

One customer lost £54,252 in four weeks without the operator seeking income evidence, carrying out adequate checks or using any other effective method to identify risk of harm.

Elsewhere, one customer was allowed to lose more than £45,000 before Hills interacted with them for the first time via telephone.

Ineffective controls also meant 331 customers who had self-excluded with Mr Green were still able to gamble on williamhill.com.

There were also major flaws in the group’s retail arm, including allowing one customer to lose £10,600 in two days without an interaction and not intervening when one customer staked £43,253 across 130 bets in a three-day period.

On the AML front, Hills was found to have allowed customers to deposit large amounts without conducting “appropriate checks”. This included one customer who was able to spend and lose £70,134 in a month and one customer who lost £36,000 in four days.

Hills also failed to request source of funds information when one customer staked £19,000 on a single bet. Hills also failed on the source of funds front when one customer stake £39,324 and lost £20,360 in 12 days.

Across the business, the UKGC found Hills’ AML policies, procedures and controls “lacked guidance on appropriate action” and also lacked “hard stops to prevent further spend and mitigate against money laundering risks before customer risk profiling is completed”.

Additionally, AML staff training was found to be insufficient and failed to educate staff on how to manage risks.

Following the investigation and settlement payment, Hills will have additional licence conditions applied to its business, which will include having a dedicated board member to oversee and improvement plan, as well as being subject to a third-party audit.

UKGC CEO Rhodes said: “said: “In the last 15 months we have taken unprecedented action against gambling operators, but we are now starting to see signs of improvement.

“There are indications that the industry is doing more to make gambling safer and reducing the possibility of criminal funds entering their businesses.

“Operators are using algorithms to spot gambling harms or criminal risk more quickly, interacting with consumers sooner, and generally having more effective policies and procedures in place,” he added.

The £19.2m record regulatory settlement eclipses that of the previous £17m record handed to Entain in August 2022.

888 has been previously fined by the Gambling Commission on several occasions, inclusive of a £7.8m penalty package paid in August 2017 and a £9.4m fine paid by the business in March 2022 , taking the overall amount of fines paid by both businesses up to £36.4m.

In a statement provided to EGR, a spokesperson for 888 highlighted the failings as occurring under the company’s previous owners.

“After William Hill was acquired, the company quickly addressed the identified issues with the implementation of a rigorous action plan,” 888 said.

“The entire group shares the UKGC’s commitment to improve compliance standards across the industry and we will continue to work collaboratively with the regulator and other stakeholders to achieve this,” the spokesperson added.