Gambling Commission enforcement director, John Pierce, addressed the Gambling Anti-Money Laundering Group Training Day on February 12, highlighting key AML (Anti-Money Laundering) concerns identified by the regulator.. Pierce urged operators to reassess customer profiles and monitoring procedures to ensure risk profiles account for transactions, geographic factors, and product risks. He noted that several customer triggers are ineffective in detecting money laundering and terrorist financing risks.. One major issue is that operators fail to properly assess a customer’s salary and wealth, leading to irregular spending going unnoticed. Additionally, the Commission criticized the industry’s over-reliance on self-declarations and open-source data instead of conducting comprehensive AML reviews before allowing large transactions.. Pierce emphasized that operators should establish realistic financial and non-financial thresholds for customer due diligence and engage in early-stage dialogue with users. The Commission also found that many operators fail to follow their own procedures when verifying the source of funds in AML reviews.. John Pierce, the enforcement director of Gambling Commision, mentioned:. We expect source of funds information to be requested on a risk-based approach but, where this is done, it should not be treated as a tick-box exercise. It is key that staff are given sufficient guidance on how to review documents and identify red flags, how to verify source of funds information and how to record their decision making.
