Finland’s social insurance institute has revised its policies for assessing financial support.

Finland.- The social insurance institute, KELA, the body that oversees social security benefits in Finland, has announced a new policy on gambling for recipients of state support. It says it will now study benefits recipients’ gambling spending as well as winnings.

Until now, the body had only taken gambling winnings into consideration in its evaluations. It said the change, effective as of this month, had been made in a bid to tackle gambling-related financial difficulties and problem gambling.

It also wants to prevent recipients from using social benefits for gambling rather than essential living expenses. It believes that around 5 per cent of recipients use social assistance for gambling.

KELA will monitor customers’ gambling accounts and calculate the difference between stakes and winnings in the long term rather than on specific bets. However, KELA will only be able to notify social services about concerns over a customer’s gambling or well-being if the customer gives consent.

Marja-Leena Valkonen, the general manager of KELA’s benefits programme, said: “We don’t tell our customers how to use their social assistance, but we are concerned when low-income individuals spend it on gambling. Social assistance is a last-resort financial aid intended for essential expenses like rent and food. We want to help those whose financial problems are made worse by gambling.”

Finland’s gambling reforms

For now, state-controlled Veikkaus is the only operator legally allowed to offer gambling products in Finland. However, the government is close to finalising legislation to introduce a competitive regulated gambling market by 2027 at the latest.

The draft legislation was published in July for a public consultation and a cross-party steering committee is now reviewing feedback with an eye to submitting it to the European Commission (EC) for review next month. If that goes ahead as expected, the government could receive approval from the EC by the middle of next year.

That saw some criticism from industry stakeholders, who warned that the market may be too restrictive to allow healthy competition and a solid channelisation to licensed offerings. There has been particular criticism of the proposed ban on affiliate marketing and social media marketing. The European Gaming and Betting Association warned that such a ban “might backfire”, making licensed operators less competitive.