UKGC hits InTouch Games with £6.1m fine as this year’s crackdown continues
Regulator finds serious social responsibility and AML failings as InTouch faces regulatory action for third time in four years
The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has slapped InTouch Games with a £6.1m fine as the regulator continues to clamp down on the industry.
InTouch Games was sanctioned following a UKGC investigation which found social responsibility and anti-money laundering (AML) failings at the operator.
The latest fine follows two previous instances where InTouch Games found itself in hot water, having paid £2.2m in lieu of a financial penalty in 2019 and a £3.4m fine in 2021 for social responsibility, AML and marketing failures.
The latest ruling, and by far the heftiest financial payment to the UKGC so far this year, comes after the operator failed a compliance assessment in March 2022.
The UKGC established failings across social responsibility and AML procedures during its assessment of InTouch Games, which operates 11 websites in the UK including mfortune, BonusBoss, Cashmo, SlotsFactory.
On the social responsibility front, the UKGC found that InTouch Games failed to interact with one customer until seven weeks after the individual had been flagged for interaction due to erratic and extended periods of play.
In the second instance, InTouch Games failed to verify a customer’s claim they earned £6,000 a month after their account was flagged due to excessive spend and activity during unsociable hours.
In terms of AML failings, the UKGC established that the Birmingham-based operator failed to follow its own policy to request source of funds information from a customer who had deposited £10,000 in a 12-month period.
The UKGC said InTouch Games did not take into account the risk of customer(s) who had been a beneficiary of a life insurance policy, those who had links to high-risk jurisdictions, or being a politically exposed person.
InTouch Games was found to have not have the adequate policies in place to address these risk factors, while the operator did not sufficiently consider the UKGC’s own guidance or risk assessment.
Kay Roberts, UKGC executive director of operations, said: “Considering this operator’s history of failings we expected to see significant improvement when we carried out our planned compliance assessment. Disappointingly, although many improvements had been made, there was still more to do.
“This £6.1m fine shows that we will take escalating enforcement action where failures are repeated and all licensees should be acutely aware of this,” she added.
The regulator noted that InTouch Games co-operated and acknowledged failings identified during the assessment before taking “immediate remedial action”.
The fine for InTouch Games is the third regulatory action from the UKGC this year already after TonyBet was hit with a six-figure fine and BetConstruct subsidiary Vbet agreed to pay a regulatory settlement.