The pilot will aim to test the effects of the checks, often considered the most controversial of the government’s gambling reforms, ahead of a wider rollout.
Rhodes said: “We want to tackle cases where customers have been able to gamble large amounts without any checks or where it was later identified that this led to significant harm.
“But we are proceeding cautiously to test whether and how financial risk assessments could be introduced in a way that s high-spending customers in financial difficulties but also s a frictionless customer journey for the vast majority of customers.”
The pilot begins this week but will not be a “live test”, meaning that no customers taking part will be affected in any way.
Instead, the Commission said the aim will be to test how the checks would work by using real data but not taking action on the results of any financial risk assessments.
Operators to test affordability checks in three stages
Lasting six to seven months, the pilot will see the largest online gambling operators test the checks in three stages.
This will involve first looking at historical customer data before moving on to current data.
Rhodes said the regulator is testing whether high spending customers in financial difficulties can be identified.
For example, this could include people who are in significant arrears, have high levels of indebtedness, or have missed multiple payments.
She added: “We are testing how operators can be given limited information to understand how severe these financial difficulties might be, in order to take action to the customer.“This would potentially allow operators in the future to look at other indicators of harm they have and tailor to the customer ranging from reducing marketing, encouraging the use of deposit limits, right up to ceasing the customer relationship.”
Where no financial difficulties are identified, she said, operators would not need to take any action.
Commission outlines pilot criteria
Overall, the Commission will aim to check the pilot’s success against four criteria.
The first criteria is the number of higher spending s that would be able to get a financial risk assessment from a credit reference agency.
The second is how quickly credit reference agencies could process an assessment and return a score rating to gambling operators.
Third, the UKGC will aim to understand how relevant credit reference data is for assessing a customer’s financial risk.
Finally, the pilot will investigate how operators might build financial risk checks into their overall customer interaction process.
Rhodes said: “If financial risk assessments are introduced in the future, we are committed to longer term evaluation which we have discussed in our March blog on this topic.
“This would enable the Commission and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport tly to consider if the policy is delivering the intended outcomes for consumers in a live environment.”
Operators will also be required to launch “light touch” affordability checks using publicly available data for customers ing a threshold of £500 in spending per 30-day rolling period.
