As with other ICAEW training films, All Too Familiar challenges mindsets and provokes discussion on the need for greater professional scepticism, this time, to help reduce the risk of economic crime, and in particular, money laundering.

ICAEW and HMRC are working together to tackle economic crime. To support this work, All Too Familiar is being made available to all ICAEW and HMRC supervised firms and insolvency practitioners without charge.

• How to access All Too Familiar
  

The impact of money laundering is devastating; it allows the proceeds of crime to be washed through legitimate bank accounts or businesses and funds other serious crimes such as modern slavery, drug trafficking, fraud, corruption, and terrorism. Our aim in producing this film is to help make firms more aware of how they might inadvertently assist economic crime by providing services to businesses which are laundering money or engaged in other illegal activity. In the film, we see that even longstanding clients might change how they generate their income, and this change could so easily be overlooked or dismissed due to the trust in the relationship which suppresses any sceptical thoughts.

The film will be supported by resources to aid the delivery of training and workshops within your organisation. Included in the learning materials pack are:

• Questions to prompt discussion about scenes from the film to help staff identify red flags, learn how to mitigate the risks of money laundering by designing effective procedures and how to prepare good quality SARs.
• A who’s who – a useful visual reference to the characters in the film.

As well as professional scepticism, All Too Familiar draws out many themes for discussion, such as whether familiarity has clouded the firm’s judgement, how and when to disengage from a client and a firm’s professional responsibilities when engaging with law enforcement. It also examines the appropriate levels of Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and risk assessments for client relationships.

• Read the film's synopsis

Everyone within your organisation. Money laundering is an issue that everyone can help to combat. Training centred around the film will aid client-facing staff to think about their CDD obligations and how to identify red flags. It will challenge partners and engagement leads to consider whether they should continue acting for a client and it will assist money laundering reporting officers (MLROs) in how to submit (SARs ) and how to engage with law enforcement.