After participating in an eleventh-hour meeting with government officials over the introduction of affordability checks on punters, the director of corporate affairs at the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has warned that concerns over the controversial scheme are being ‘brushed off’.
Greg Swift, a senior figure at the sport’s regulatory body, told a podcast that the views of racing stakeholders are ‘simply not being listened to’ by those who will decide if the checks, which have been rebadged as ‘financial risk assessments’ (FRA), will be introduced.
The Gambling Commission, who have been given the role of overseer by ministers, will meet with governmental officials on Thursday to decide whether the assessments will be written into law or not.
High Stakes
The regulator has been piloting their FRA scheme since the summer of 2024.
It has been designed to protect big spending punters that might be at risk of financial vulnerability, putting into place black-and-white thresholds at which triggers will be alarmed.
So, if punters lose £1,000 or more in a rolling 24-hour period, or £2,000 or more within 90 days, their betting provider will be required to launch a background check on them.
The idea is that these checks are ‘frictionless’, using data already on file at the UK’s leading credit reference agencies. That way, the assessment request does not appear on an individual’s credit report.
According to the Gambling Commission’s executive director Tim Miller, no punter will be required to submit any documents to their betting site to prove their financial viability – that prospect was one of the main sticking points to the implementation of the scheme.
“In 2026, it can’t be right that this still leads to some operators asking consumers to share bank statements and other financial documentation,”
Miller said in a keynote speech delivered last week.
“Such an approach is outdated, inconsistent and disproportionate.”
By the final phase of the pilot study, 97% of checks were able to be performed in a frictionless manner – much higher than the government’s own estimate.
However, there were challenges reported, including one case in which a test subject yielded three different results from as many credit agencies. And critics of the scheme suggest that if frictionless checks can’t be performed in 100% of cases, they shouldn’t be given the green light.
Even anti-gambling campaigners have voiced their concerns, with Dr James Noyes – an FRA advocate – calling on the government to pause the implementation until all of the pilot study evidence has been scrutinised further.
Anyway, we’ll all find out more on Thursday, when representatives of the government and the Gambling Commission will meet – it’s expected that an announcement on FRAs will be made shortly after.
Testing and Challenging
Last week, a meeting was held between a wide range of delegates, including Greg Swift of the BHA and Baroness Thatcher, the gambling minister.
The subject of FRAs was high up on the list of discussion topics, although – according to Swift at least – the views of horse racing as a whole fell on deaf ears.
He described the meeting as ‘testing’ and ‘challenging’, and was seemingly surprised by how little reverence was given to the concerns of racing over the introduction of the FRA scheme.
Swift spoke of a ‘growing sense of frustration’ that the possible impact to racing is not being considered, before warning that the powers-that-be are simply only hearing one side of the debate.
At the thresholds outlined in the plans, many professional and high stakes punters will likely trigger a check – something that not all individuals will be happy to have going on in the background.
The concern is that they will instead head for the black market, where no such checks are ever likely to be undertaken. It’s a worry for the betting sector as a whole and racing specifically, who receive around £108 million a year from the Horserace Betting Levy Board contribution.
As noted by Swift, if punters turn to illegal operators for their high stakes bets, they put themselves in peril but also cost bookmakers, horse racing and the Treasury in the form of lost income or taxable revenue.
“If the decision is taken on Thursday to introduce these checks, and then those checks are implemented as have currently been tested, the reality of that is a £900 million per year loss to the betting industry and £250m lost in the first five years to the British horseracing industry,” Swift commented.
“But it’s also £300m a year lost to the Exchequer in reduced tax yield. That’s when the ears prick up. That’s when the government thinks ‘hang on’.”
Last week, both the Gambling Commission and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport refused to answer a series of questions posed to them by the Racing Post regarding the future of FRAs.