Yesterday, fines were issued to Jumpman and ProgressPlay following an investigation into their approach to managing potential money laundering use of their white labels and their social and customer responsibility failures.
Do bear in mind, Jumpman sites also run ProgressPlay games, therefore the two investigations are closely linked and the same failings apply to both with Jumpman taking ultimate responsibility.
Jumpman is expected to pay £500,000.00 and Progress Play £175,718. These figures have been reached in acceptance of failings settlements from both licensees.
What Were The Failings?
From reading the public statements in relation to the two investigations it is clear to understanding the following:
- customers were able to deposit large amounts within the time between registering a new account or multiple accounts and having their source of funds (SOF / their affordability) appropriately checked.
- this in turn, meant that anti money laundering and potential terrorist financing was not considered or risk assessed within a timely window. Deposits of sums of money larger than the average annual salary were made during a very short timeframe without any risk assessment trigger.
- communication methods in place for bingo websites to provide support to reduce gambling harms for either the customer to raise or as identified by the bingo website itself are ineffective.
What Were The Specific Findings?
The public statements provide more details on the issues raised, which in summary are:
- £15,000 was lost by a single customer during a month period. Within that period of time, £11,000 was lost over a two day period within the middle of the COVID-19 national lockdown. The said customer, made 13 communications with the provider. Details of the communications were not disclosed in the statement, however they are almost certainly linked to the customer considering there is a problem with their gambling habits, potentially across more than one website.
- During 6 week period, a customer lost £20,000 in total. Over that period, they increased their wager to levels that should have triggered an affordability check. There were 16 communications during this time between the customer and the provider, however these appear to have been ineffective; what ever the conversation was regarding the volume and play and increased spend it simply didn’t work to reduce gambling harms.
- £19,000 was lost by a single customer over a 4 month period without any sufficient affordability checks being carried out.
What Is Expected Of Jumpman And Progress Play Moving Forward?
As part of the social responsibility and self excluding features available to help reduce gambling harms, if a customer requests to exclude from one ‘bingo website / gambling site’ or white label / brand , then the licensee (Jumpman and Progress Play, in this case) must apply this request to ALL accounts held by that person. In this case it could be up to nearly 500 different websites.
All accounts held across all of the bingo websites customers are registered at must be linked, not seen as individual entities. Therefore wider monitoring of affordability can be scrutinised further. This is to ensure that customers opening up multiple accounts are not able to circumvent or hide harmful increases or frequency in spending. Furthermore, the providers will be swifter in identifying a potential issue.
Progress Play are expected to ensure regular reviews of the effectiveness of customer interactions around gambling concerns are carried out and more frequent and robust monitoring of their impact on players.