Research team: Associate Professor Tina Cockburn TEP, Dr Kelly Purser TEP and Dr Sherrena Buckby

Project title: The role of financial planners in preventing, recognising and responding to elder financial abuse

Australian society is ageing, with older Australians holding significant wealth. This creates societal challenges, including increasing risk of elder financial abuse. Financial abuse is ‘the illegal or improper exploitation or use of funds or resources of the older person’ (WHO, 2002). It can include any aspect of a person’s financial affairs, for example: mishandling money and/or assets; executing loan documents with the older person as guarantor; stealing; and coercing/forcing an older person to revoke and/or amend enduring and/or testamentary documents (ALRC, 2017). It is commonly perpetrated by family members and carers (ALRC, 2017), and remains relatively hidden (Lacey, 2014). As trusted advisers, financial planners are uniquely placed to prevent, recognise and respond to elder financial abuse (Corbin, 2017; Hayne 2019). To support financial planners to discharge legal and professional obligations and rebuild trust, effective education and training programs are needed (Tachino, 2017). This project will contribute to financial advisors’ awareness and understanding of elder financial abuse, including identification of risk factors; ethical and professional obligations to safeguard against elder financial abuse; interventions and prevention strategies; relevant laws; and responses to elder abuse. Outcomes will include: a literature review, conference presentation, report, fact sheet for financial planners and further research/training recommendations.

Research team: Dr Tracey West, Mr Richard Olley, Dr Tom Verhelst

Project title: Quantifying the dynamics of elder abuse

While data on elder abuse is lacking, a report by AIFS (2015) suggests that between 2% and 14% of older Australians are likely to experience elder abuse in any given year. Elder abuse describes a broad range of abuse, however, the most common type experienced by elderly people is financial abuse (WHO, 2015). Higher relative wealth, physical and mental health problems are contributing to the increased risk of elder financial abuse (Kemp & Mosqueda, 2005). The impact of elder financial abuse is a significant issue as elderly victims suffer a greater impact of financial losses as they have neither the time nor the capacity to recover from the economic loss and may not be able to support living expenses (Darzins, Lowndes, Wainer, Owada, & Mihaljcic, 2010). Accordingly, this project aims to quantify the dynamics of elder abuse. Utilising complaints data reported to the Aged & Disability Advocacy Australia (ADAA) Queensland network, we thematically classify complaints relating to elder financial abuse and quantify the range of factors associated with it. For financial advisers and other professionals, the reported abuse of financial and legal instruments such as powers of attorney, access to accounts and wills, will help formulate protection strategies for clients.