Every casino you have ever deposited at has a rating describing what happens to
your money if the business fails. It is four words long, it is in the terms, and
almost nobody has read it.
The Gambling Commission’s answer to the customer funds problem is that you
should be told. Not that you should be protected. That distinction is the entire
subject of this piece, and it is worth ten minutes of your time.
The four phrases, and what they mean
There are four ratings and they are not marketing language. Each one has a
definition, and the gap between the bottom and the top is the gap between losing
your balance and keeping it.
Not protected, no segregation. Your money sits in the
business account with everything else. This one is only available to
land-based operators and a narrow slice of remote ones.
Not protected, segregation of customer funds. Your money is
in a separate account, but it still forms part of the assets of the business if
that business goes under. This is the floor for most online operators, and it
is where a great many of them sit.
Medium protection. Separate accounts plus an arrangement,
usually a Quistclose account or insurance, meant to get the money distributed to
customers rather than creditors. The Commission’s own wording is that there is
no absolute guarantee.
High protection. A formal trust account, legally and in
practice separate from the company, verified by an independent trustee or
external auditor. This is the one you want. It is also entirely voluntary.
Which is the part worth sitting with. A trust account costs money to run and
buys the operator nothing it can advertise on a homepage, so the incentive to
volunteer for one is thin. Nobody is obliged to, and the Commission has not said
it intends to oblige anybody.
Finding your own casino’s rating takes about a minute. Open the terms, search
for “protection of customer funds”, and read the four words. If the page does not
contain them, that is information too.
What actually changed
Two things, and they are both about disclosure rather than money.
Operators holding your funds must state their rating in the terms, and put it
in front of you at the point you first deposit. Not buried on page nine of a
document nobody opens.
And since 31 October 2025, any operator carrying a “not protected” rating has
to remind you every six months that your money is not protected. The reminder
has to tell you how much of yours it is holding.
That second rule is genuinely useful and it is the reason we would rather you
did not filter these emails. It is the only routine moment at which a casino is
obliged to tell you exactly what it owes you.
What did not change
The important part. There is still no legal duty on a gambling operator to
protect customer funds against insolvency, and no scheme standing behind you if
one fails.
Compare that with the bank the money came from. Deposits at an authorised UK
bank are covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme up to £120,000
per person per firm, a limit that rose from £85,000 on 1 December 2025.
Gambling has nothing of the kind. No compensation scheme, no ceiling, no
backstop. The Commission is explicit that it cannot guarantee you will get your
money back, and it is right to say so.
None of which makes the disclosure rules pointless. They turn an invisible
risk into a visible one, and a visible risk is something you can act on. But
transparency is not the same thing as protection, and it is worth being clear
which of the two you have been given.
So the practical advice writes itself. Look up your operator’s rating, treat
anything below medium as a reason to keep a smaller balance, and get comfortable
with withdrawing. Our guide to
fast payout casinos
exists partly for this reason.
And check the licence before any of it, which is the first thing our
UK online casinos guide
covers. A rating on an unlicensed site is a sentence somebody typed.
Image: a queue outside Northern Rock, Brighton, September 2007, by Dominic Alves, CC BY 2.0.
18+. Gambling should be entertainment, not income. Long term the
house wins. Free and confidential help is at BeGambleAware.org.
