UKGC fines Intouch Games £6.1m for regulatory failures

Intouch Games Group has been ordered to pay a whopping £6.1m to the UK Gambling Commission due to social responsibility and money laundering failings. This is the third time that the company has been fined since 2019.

Since carrying out its investigations, the UKGC has found a high number of failures. These include waiting a lengthy 7-week period to get in touch with a customer who had been flagged for erratic play patterns as well as the failure to verify if a player earned £6,000 a month as they claimed. Both of these examples were flagged as serious problem gambling issues.

The UKGC also discovered that Intouch Games also did not have adequate procedures, policies and controls in place around money laundering. Because of these failures, it also failed to take into account the risk of a client being a beneficiary of a life insurance policy, being a politically exposes person, or having links to high-risk jurisdictions. It also failed to consider the Commission’s money laundering and terrorist financing risk assessment.

This is the third time that the company has been fined by the UKGC. Back in 2019, it struck a £2.2m settlement for regulatory failures before paying £3.4m and receiving a warning for other failures back in 2021.

Kay Roberts, the Executive Director of Operations at the UKGC stated: 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 aware of this.”

Intouch Gaammes was acquired by the Isle of Man-based company Skywind Holdings in 2022. It has not yet commented on the fine.