Kela to take into account only net winnings from gambling when determining social assistance

Kela has updated the guidelines for how winnings from gambling should be handled when making decisions on social assistance. This is due to both changes in the gambling market and Kela’s own observations. If it seems like a customer has a gambling problem, Kela will either alert social services or help the customer seek help for their problem. 

Up until now, Kela has only taken into account the winnings from gambling when making decisions on social assistance. Now, Kela will also take into account the money used for gambling. In practice, this means that Kela’s claims determination specialists will look at customers’ gambling accounts to calculate the difference between stakes and winnings. 

The new guidelines are meant to prevent situations in which social assistance recipients are put into an unreasonable position because they have winnings from gambling. This has been possible because up until now all winnings, no matter how small, have been counted as income that reduces the amount of social assistance, even if the customer has used those winnings to gamble more and lost all of their winnings straight away. Under the new guidelines, Kela will start to look at winnings over a longer period of time rather than at one-off transactions.

While the primary task of claims determination specialists at Kela is to administer benefits, Kela also aims to prevent financial difficulties among those receiving social assistance and to prevent the harm caused by gambling problems.

“We at Kela do not tell our customers how they should use their social assistance, but naturally we are concerned if people with a low income use their money on gambling. Social assistance is a last-resort form of financial assistance meant to be used for the payment of daily living expenses such as rent and food. We want to help those whose financial problems are made worse by gambling,” says Marja-Leena Valkonen, Benefits Manager at Kela. 

Oftentimes gambling problems only come to light when the person affected faces a crisis. Valkonen wants to remind customers that there is help available for people with gambling problems, for example through Peluuri. 

Approximately 5 per cent of social assistance recipients use their social assistance for gambling. Kela can alert the social services in a customer’s wellbeing services county to their gambling problem, but only with the customer’s consent. The goal is to get the customer help with their gambling problem as early as possible. 

The new guidelines have come into effect in October.