"People who place an occasional bet, are a recent winning customer or even regularly spend hundreds of pounds would be unlikely to need a check."
— Gambling Commission, July 2026
Hold on to that line from the Commission's July 2026 update. Financial risk assessments, the "affordability checks" that grew out of the 2023 White Paper reforms, are aimed squarely at the very top end of spending. In July 2026 the Commission's Board decided to press ahead with a staged introduction, starting with the largest operators.
How an assessment works
Credit reference agencies carry out a frictionless, document-free assessment with no impact on your credit score. They look for things like defaults and multiple or significant arrears. If something gets flagged, the operator decides whether to offer support, such as cutting back marketing or helping you set deposit limits. Nobody gets banned automatically.
Once it's fully in place, the Commission expects fewer than 3% of accounts to need an assessment, and 97% of those to be frictionless. That leaves roughly 1 in 1,000 accounts needing an assessment that can't happen in the background. Typically those are people who've recently arrived in Britain, changed their name or address, or haven't had their identity verified, and they may be asked to use open banking or provide documents. The data can only be used for regulatory purposes, never commercial ones.
| Stage |
Aged 25 and over |
Under 25 / higher-risk groups |
| Stage 1 (largest operators first) |
Over £5,000 net deposits in 24 hours |
Over £2,500 in 24 hours |
| Interim stages |
Set after further engagement |
Set after further engagement |
| Final stage |
Over £1,000 in 24 hours or £3,000 in 90 days |
Over £750 in 24 hours or £2,000 in 90 days |
Net deposit thresholds on a rolling basis.
Fewer than 0.5% of customers go past the stage-one pattern. The Commission's evidence explains the focus on big spenders: high-spending customers are two to four times more likely to have a debt management plan, and two to five times more likely to have had a default in the previous 12 months, than the wider population.
Our view? For the vast majority of people reading a tipster site, these checks will run silently or not at all. If you're regularly depositing thousands in a day, a background check is a fair trade for the protection it gives the minority who are in trouble.
