Changes to customer-led tools - financial limits
Our Senior Policy Manager Julie Williams talks about our work to empower consumers through improving Customer-led tools, looking at the changes to financial limits coming into effect this month and next summer.
Posted 23 October 2025 by Julie Williams
October sees two important steps in our ongoing work to help inform and empower consumers through improvements to gambling management tools. Earlier this month, we published the response to our supplementary consultation on the definition of deposit limits, and at the end of the October the first phase of changes to the Remote Gambling and Software Technical Standards (RTS) for Financial limits – response document published in February this year – will come into effect.
This package of changes includes new and updated requirements and implementation guidance. All these changes are designed to help empower consumers to have greater awareness and control over their gambling. We are introducing the changes in stages, firstly at the end of October and then in June 2026. These changes will:
- help all customers manage their gambling in ways that work for them, so that customers who want to use financial limits can do so easily
- bring consistency and clarity for anyone who chooses to set deposit limits, while still supporting gambling businesses to offer customer choice for different forms of limits.
Among the changes coming into effect from 31 October, all gambling businesses must:
And by 30 June 2026, all gambling businesses must:
Gambling businesses will still be able to offer net deposit limits in addition to gross deposit limits, supporting consumer choice.
More information on the June 2026 changes can be found on our website.
We’ve received several questions about the upcoming changes across both stages. Below, we answer some of them and explain what these changes might mean for consumers.
Free text and preventing errors
We have received a few questions about the changes coming into effect this month around using a free text box for limit-setting and mitigating against user error, including whether operators can specify a minimum level for limits, or introduce rules to the field such as multiples of £10 to make reporting easier.
Implementation guidance states that the ‘free text’ field can permit specific monetary increments, such as whole pounds, although this is not a requirement.
In our consultation response document, we explained that we think it is reasonable for operators to be able to stipulate increments or multiples, or programme the ‘free text’ field to only receive whole amounts, as a mitigation against user error and as long as this in itself does not nudge customers or anchor their decisions in any material way. Therefore:
- an operator may set a minimum amount for deposit limits for practical or technical reasons only, such as costs associated with processing transactions, and the operator should be able to provide evidence to support how this minimum amount was reached
- the intention of using free text is to ensure that customers are not nudged to set a limit that may not be right for them, so an operator would not be able to offer a prepopulated and/or 'greyed out' suggestion in the field.
- the ‘free text’ field could have some rules or parameters, but as stipulated in the RTS this would be to mitigate against user error rather than make reporting easier or potentially nudge customers to setting limits that are not right for them.
Messaging and reminders
From the end of October, customers with active accounts (activity within a rolling 12-month period) should start to receive reminders or prompts to review their account activity, to review their account limits if they have them, and to set limits if they don’t. Specifically:
- customers who have limits set on their account will receive a prompt to review their account and transaction information at least every six-months, and customers can request more frequent reminders. This is to encourage customers to review the level of their limits against their activity to ensure they are still meaningful.
- existing customers without limits set on their account will receive a prompt to consider setting a limit at least every 12 months.
Operators have been and will be able to roll out these prompts in a schedule that suits their business, so that active customers with limits on their account should receive at least one prompt in the six-month period from 31 October 2025 to 30 April 2026. All active customers without limits on their account should receive at least one prompt to review this position by October 2026.
We haven’t specified how these prompts should be delivered, or which communications channels operators must use, but we do encourage operators to monitor engagement with any prompts or alerts to understand their effectiveness.
These prompts are not intended to proactively re-engage customers who may be taking a break from using their account, or have opted out from direct marketing, and a prompt at the next log in would be a way of delivering the requirement in these cases.
Customers opening new accounts from 31 October 2025 will be proactively prompted to set a limit at onboarding, and will then receive the prompts to review account activity over time.
Fixed vs rolling limit periods
Consultation feedback noted the difference between fixed or ‘rolling’ calendar periods, and responses included different interpretations of ‘rolling’ – for some ‘rolling’ meant the limit period ‘rolling over’ or resetting at a point based on when the limit was put in place rather than predetermined by the system, and others interpreted ‘rolling’ as the limit duration resetting or restarting when the customer begins to gamble after a period of inactivity. We covered this in our consultation response published earlier this month.
The latter, where the period or duration of the limit would continuously move forward with time, would not be suitable for use with customer-set financial limits.
However, gambling businesses are able to choose whether the duration of the limits they offer customers will have a global ‘reset’ date, day and/or time which applies to all customer-set financial limits, or whether the ‘reset’ point is more customer-led, and relates to the date, day or time that the customer originally set the limit on their account. The most important thing is it must be made clear to the customer how and when the time period or duration of their financial limit will reset.
‘Equal prominence’
We want customers to see the choices for different forms of limit that operators have chosen to make available to them. Deposit limits (ie gross deposit limits) must be given at least ‘equal prominence’ to other types of financial limits offered. This means that gross deposit limits cannot be suppressed or ‘hidden’ in order to promote other types of limits to customers (the reverse also applies, and we do not require operators to ‘hide’ other types of limits).
What changes will be seen by consumers
Consumers are likely to see what seem like small changes to make the customer journey around setting and managing their financial limits easier.
Consumers should also see targeted messages and prompts to support consumer empowerment.
Between now and 30 June 2026, new customers who haven’t had the option of setting a deposit limit with a particular operator will start to see that type of limit being available again, and by next June anyone who wants to set a gross deposit limit on their account will be able to do so, regardless of who they gamble with.
For existing customers who already have a different type of limit on their account – such as a net deposit limit – by next June the choice to switch to a gross deposit limit will be made available to them.
Operators will not have to unilaterally move accounts with other types of financial limits to gross deposit limits when they are available, and customers who are happy with their current limits can keep those in place as long as that type of limit is on offer.
Operators who have reintroduced gross deposit limits as a result of the changes should make customers aware of this when they prompt customers to review their account activity.