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Two white-label gambling companies, which each operate more than 200 websites for other companies, have been assessed more than £700,000 for failings in anti-money laundering (AML) and safer gambling policies.
Alderney-based Jumpman Gaming will pay £514,000, including investigation costs, and Cyprus-based ProgressPlay will pay £188,000 including costs, the UK’s Gambling Commission said today (May 17).
Jumpman relied too heavily on automated processes rather than human intervention and did not set realistic spending thresholds, the regulator said.
In 2018, the Gambling Commission warned Jumpman and ProgressPlay over unfair restrictions on how players could withdraw money from gambling accounts.
Detailed in this enforcement, Jumpman allowed a player to lose more than £15,000 in less than a month, including £11,000 in two days at the peak of COVID-19 lockdowns, without sufficient evidence of affordability, and another lost more than £20,000 in six weeks before affordability was considered, the commission said.
Some players who opted to self exclude from gambling were nonetheless able to gamble with multiple accounts found at other websites Jumpman operated, according to the Gambling Commission.
Jumpman also did not comply with its own policies for AML alert triggers, the regulator said.
ProgressPlay allowed players 14 days to supply source-of-funds documents and they were allowed to gamble during that time, the regulator said.
The company also did not adequately review its own source-of-funds findings, which allowed some players to spend more than their disclosed income, the regulator wrote.
ProgressPlay also did not review the effectiveness of its responsible gambling interactions as required and staff interacting with high-spending gamblers may have received incentives for player bonus take-ups without proper regard for whether the VIPs were displaying markers of harm.
ProgressPlay operates 201 sites including mrslot.com, mrjackvegas.com, britainbet.com and lotto.net.
Jumpman operates 243 websites including bananaspins.com, bigbenslots.co.uk, cheekycasino.com and slotsbaby.com
White-label operations have attracted controversy because they have enabled companies with little or no interest in the UK market to sign sponsorship deals with Premier League teams and thus gain advertising exposure in their home markets, even though they may not be able to meet the UK’s regulatory standards.
“There is a concern that unlicensed operators who would potentially not pass the commissions’ initial licensing suitability checks, are looking to use the white label model to provide gambling services in Great Britain”, the regulator said last year.
Therefore, white-label companies must perform appropriate due diligence checks on prospective clients, including whether the partners in their clients have links to criminal activity, the commission wrote.
