Leading betting and gaming operator Entain will launch its Advanced Responsibility and Care (ARC) player protection initiative across its 14 UK-facing brands by this summer.

The initiative will identify UK customers who are at greatest risk of potential financial problems and proactively implement stake limits and tighter affordability checks.

With affordability checks being launched across its 14 UK brands, Entain claims it will be the first leading operator to roll out a combination of personalized technology-led player protection, affordability checks and individualized staking limits.

“We have been working on player affordability concepts for the past 18 months as part of our ARC affordability programme,” said Entain group operations director Peter Marcus, who is leading the ARC initiative. “This aims to identify relevant limits at the right time to protect customers whom our technology has identified as being vulnerable, or particularly at risk.

“For those we believe are at most financial risk, we set limits which only increase if those individuals share certain information about their affordability. This means the vast majority of customers who show no indications of financial risk can still bet with us freely.

“We think this is an important step in preserving personal freedoms, and will also greatly benefit the horse-racing industry, which is concerned about the impact of blanket measures on its future viability.”

Entain’s affordability framework under ARC uses open source and commercially available data on customers combined with behavioural indicators.

“We firmly believe that a more personalised, individual approach to player protection is the way forward which is why, for the most vulnerable customers, we have taken action as soon as we can,” said Entain CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen. “We are deeply committed to giving every customer the best experiences and protection we can, tailored to their particular needs.”

Entain will continue to develop ARC, with further models and behavioural indicators still in development, to include variable stake limits depending on the risk level of the customer. 

ARC is due to be fully live in the UK across all Entain brands from this summer, and is being customized for specific countries internationally later in the year.

Shares in Entain plc (LSE:ENT) were trading 0.33 per cent lower at 1,527.00 pence per share in London Wednesday morning.