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Two Kindred units, 32Red and Platinum Gaming, have been fined £7.1m and warned by the UK’s Gambling Commission for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failings.
Gibraltar-based 32Red will pay £4.2m, while London-based Platinum, which runs Unibet.co.uk, will pay £2.9m, the regulator said today (March 23).
32Red’s player protection controls were not effective, with one gambler allowed to deposit £43,000 and lose £36,000 within a week, the Gambling Commission said.
Player gambling session times should have enabled the company to identify gambling-related harm earlier, the commission said.
Customer interactions were “superficial and lacked depth and probing”, with the company settling for assurances from the player that they were comfortable with their gambling and could afford it, the regulator said.
At Platinum, policies failed to identify that several self-excluded players were able to register and gamble on Platinum after being self-excluded and blocked at 32Red, the regulator wrote.
It did not identify and interact with players who may have been experiencing harm from gambling.
32Red failed to properly implement anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF) policies as required.
Financial triggers for AML reviews at 32Red were too high and not sufficient to manage money laundering/terrorist financing risks.
Many 32Red players subject to source of funds and source of wealth requests were allowed to deposit funds and gamble before they responded to the requests, resulting in significant losses in some cases, the commission said.
32Red relied too much on an assumption that funds coming through Financial Conduct Authority-related firms mitigated risk.
The company violated its own policies on source of funds request deadlines, allowing a player to gamble more than £16,000 and lose more than £8,000 until the account was blocked, the commission wrote.
Platinum’s AML policies were not appropriate and were not adequately kept under review to ensure they were still appropriate, the Gambling Commission said.
“These failures highlight clearly that both operators failed to interact with customers in a way which minimises the risk of them experiencing harms associated with gambling,” Kay Roberts, commission executive director, said.
“Our investigations also showed that policies and procedures were overlooked, both around customer accounts and anti-money laundering practices.”
The company cooperated with the commission and took steps to correct its problems, the regulator said.
“While we accept the outcome, and the acknowledgement that we have already taken significant steps to strengthen our processes, we also recognise that we need to work even harder to ensure a safe and compliant business," said Kindred CEO Henrik Tjärnström.
Kindred said it accepts that "certain systems and processes in place in 2020 and early 2021 were not in line with Commission expectations around affordability".
