Balancing harm prevention and liberty preservation when implementing financial risk assessments for gambling in the United Kingdom: Insights from open banking data

Abstract

Background and aims

The United Kingdom (UK) and Dutch governments have recently implemented mandatory financial risk (affordability) assessments for online gambling as a harm prevention measure. Assessments should trigger at a level of gambling expenditure that strikes a balance between harm prevention (most at-risk consumers should surpass the threshold) and liberty preservation (most no-/lower-risk consumers should gamble below it), yet little empirical research exists to guide threshold setting. We aimed to demonstrate how research can inform the harm-prevention, liberty-preservation trade-off in this context and evaluate the UK's proposed implementation of financial risk assessments.

Design, setting and participants

We reanalysed a dataset that combines self-reported Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) scores and open banking data from consumers who gamble (n = 424) to (1) simulate the impact of the UK's rolling 30-day £150 net-deposit (deposits minus withdrawals) threshold for financial risk assessments, and (2) identify optimal threshold values for these assessments under different circumstances. Participants were UK residents who had gambled in the past year, recruited via Prolific in April 2024.

Measurements

Participants completed a survey containing the PGSI and agreed to provide their past 12 months' banking records.

Findings

Over 12 months, two-thirds of at-risk (PGSI ≥1) and nearly half of no-/lower-risk participants crossed the UK's £150 threshold [area under the curve = 0.66, 95% confidence intervals (CIs) = 0.62–0.71], demonstrating a greater emphasis on harm prevention over liberty preservation. Increasing the value to £186.9 (95% CIs = £69.5–£401.7) slightly improved this balance, although £150 remained within the range of appropriate values. Optimising for harm prevention in our sample required lowering the threshold to £39.0 (95% CIs = £29.6–£58.8), while emphasising liberty preservation increased it to £716.5 (95% CIs = £508.5–£990.9). We found that using a more conservative definition of risk (≥2 PGSI harms) resulted in higher thresholds, and lower thresholds may be appropriate for younger adults (<30 years). Finally, our findings suggest that thresholds based on spending with all operators—rather than single operators as implemented in the UK—may be better able to differentiate at-risk from no-/lower-risk consumers, although the added benefit of this approach in our sample was marginal and further research is needed to confirm its value.

Conclusions

The United Kingdom's £150 net-deposit threshold for financial risk assessments for online gambling may place more emphasis on harm prevention than liberty preservation. This study provides a methodological template for guiding the implementation of financial risk assessments for online gambling. Because our sample is not representative of the broader UK gambling population, our specific threshold estimates should be treated as provisional.