Banks are still too trusting towards individuals when looking into their sources of wealth despite the rash of recent coverage of anti-money laundering problems, the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK regulator, has warned.

The comments came from Rob Gruppetta, the manager of financial crime operations at the FCA, while speaking at a conference in London. His organisation was evaluating 14 banks for their money laundering controls as part of a continuing, rolling process, Gruppetta said.

In the cases that the FCA investigators had embarked on so far, he said, firms were still not carrying out the proper checks on individuals' sources of wealth or the funds they were presenting to the banks. He added that institutions still tended to take what individuals told them at face value.

In June 2011, the Financial Services Authority, the FCA's predecessor, published a thematic review of the efficacy with which banks managed money laundering risk and found them wanting in the way they were managing higher-risk business relationships and situations.