Colin, this is the DNA of the gambling industry, sadly. It never has been proactive and never will be, instead it only reacts to what is imposed.
I downed about GBP250K in the years 1999-2000 while living in the UK, most of it at one group. I verified the first time an account in 2005 or thereabouts, that was some 7 years after starting to play, changing country of residence 3 times and an estimated million had gone down the drain. Nobody gave a rat's ass about AML, EDD, SOF, SOW ....... SOS, SOT, SOX, SOY or SOZ, whatever all the acronyms are.
All that is done now is a piecemeal approach, which still lacks in some core fundamentals that you would not get away with in any other industry.
If you take a trip down memory lane via Wayback you will see that at the beginning there was barely an 18+ sign on the pages. That basic DNA and attitude is still there and will probably take an entire generation of operators to change substantially.
However, what the UKGC and others do now looks completely chaotic. Something here, something there and nothing proper...like a herd of chicken that starts running in all directions when chased by a fox.
One example, VIP schemes - should they then not be removed in all aspects of our lives, e.g. Platinum Credit Cards come with significant higher credit limits, virtually encouraging vulnerable people to spend more on credit.