UK financial firms ‘may be lending over £174m a month to at-risk gamblers’

Bank data analysis suggests lenders could be unwittingly fuelling gambling problems by extending credit

Financial institutions in the UK may be lending more than 174m a month to people who are using a risky proportion of their income on gambling, an analysis of the spending patterns of loan customers suggests.

The credit technology firm Abound looked at the open banking data of people who applied for its loans and used artificial intelligence to assess all their financial transactions over a six-month period.