UKGC and William Hill Group settle for £19.2m over regulatory failures

William Hill Group has become the latest business in the United Kingdom to be meted out a stiff collective financial settlement by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC). The business will now have to foot a dear bill to the tune of £19.2m ($23.73m) over social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures, the regulator said in a statement published on its official page.

The William Hill Group has had three of its entities accept settlement agreements each. WHG (International) Limited, which is the operator behind williamhill.com, will bear the brunt of this settlement with £12.5m ($15.41m). Mr Green Limited, which operates the namesake brand, mrgreen.com, will have to foot £3.7m ($4.56m), and William Hill Organizaiton Limited, which is responsible for the company’s fleet of 1,344 gambling and betting shops across Britain, will further have to comply with £3m ($3.70m) payment.

This is the biggest enforcement action ever issued by the UKGC, following the £17m ($21m) fine meted out to Entain back in 2022. The present settlement, massive as it is, is the best scenario for the company, assures UKGC chief executive Andrew Rhodes who said that the investigation had discovered "widespread" and "alarming" issues that seriously made the regulator consider a license suspension altogether.

Instead, though, William Hill acted swiftly and began implementing improvements that convinced the regulator to stop short of an outright suspension. Rhodes further commented on the series of regulatory actions taken against gambling entities over the past year or so. Since the beginning of 2022, a total of 26 enforcement cases have resulted in penalties to the tune of £76m ($93.70m).

"In the last 15 months we have taken unprecedented action against gambling operators, but we are now starting to see signs of improvement," Rhodes commented. The UKGC also offered a detailed breakdown of what the social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures of the William Hill Group were.

In terms of social responsibility, William Hill Group failed to introduce sufficient controls to protect consumers. Certain customers were not properly identified as likely to be experiencing gambling-related harm, and no timely intervention was conducted.

New and returning customers were exposed to the risk of incurring substantial financial losses over a short period of time, the regulator said. Ineffective controls saw as many as 331 customers at WHG (International) Limited play, even though the customers had self-excluded with Mr Green.

In terms of anti-money laundering failures, the regulator said that customers were able to deposit large amounts of money without the necessary checks. Some of the cases cited by the regulator include customers who deposited and lost £70,134 in a single month, another one who lost £38,000 in a little more than a month, and a third one who ended up losing £36,000 in four days with WHG (International) Limited.

Mr Green was also named for having allowed one customer to deposit £73,535 and lose £14,068 in four months. No "appropriate" checks were conducted. In the case of William Hill Organization Limited, the entity failed to provide sufficient information about the Source of Funds. In fact, no request to establish SoF was placed on several occasions.

There were other instances of failures that the regulator detailed in the case. The money obtained from the settlement will be used to advance socially responsible initiatives. More license conditions will be introduced to ensure future compliance, the UKGC said in its statement.

The Group will also face an audit that will gauge whether it is successfully implementing a series of cornerstone licensure prerequisites, such as safer gambling policies, AML measures, and various procedures and controls.

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