A couple of recent cases in Nottinghamshire have revealed the devastating impact that financial abuse can have on individuals and families.
In one case, a family of criminals defrauded a woman in her 80s, along with her brother, out of £411,836.98.
One criminal was providing home-based care to one of the victims. Over time, she and her family gradually took control of the victim’s finances, initially through stealing a bank card.
When the victim’s brother was hospitalised following a fall, the criminals forged a will that made themselves beneficiaries and executors. When this man passed away, the criminals were set to inherit two properties, and nearly £1m in investments.
Read more about this case on the BBC’s website.
Financial Abuse in the Family
In another case, a couple allowed an elderly relative to move into their home. Over the next 14 months, they secretly used his bank card to spend almost £100,000 of his life savings.
In what police believe was an attempt to avoid detection, the couple then moved their relative into a care home. They also suggested that he was suffering from dementia.
When police visited the relative in the care home, he explained that he’d given the couple his bank card and his PIN, so that they could help him manage his finances. He had asked the couple to return his bank card, but they had refused.
Read more about this case on the Nottingham Post website.
Learn to Spot the Signs of Financial Abuse
These are two unrelated cases that happened to take place in Nottinghamshire. However, there will be similar cases of financial abuse taking place across the country.
Read about any case, and you’ll likely see similar patterns of abuse: A person in a position of trust, whether a carer or a relative, takes advantage of someone in their care, ultimately taking control of their finances. This could be through simply stealing a bank card, or through forging documents in order to gain power of attorney and other executive functions.
Financial abuse can happen gradually, with a little bit of cash lifted at a time. Plus, abusers will often operate in secret, taking advantage of slow-moving and complicated admin procedures. As a result, often it might not be clear that any abuse or exploitation has taken place until the victim’s experienced significant losses.
But if more people learn to spot the signs of financial abuse, perhaps more abusers would be caught earlier, before they’ve had a chance to do as much damage.
Read our essential introduction to financial abuse here.
What is Financial Capability?
When we talk about financial capability – or financial literacy – we’re talking about an individual’s ability to make informed decisions about their money.
Numeracy can be an essential component of financial capability. Beyond this, financial capability can include:
- Knowing and understanding your own finances, including budgeting, credit, interest, and debt.
- Knowledge of available financial products and services.
- An understanding of common scams, and the fundamentals of financial security (e.g. never share your card or pin).
Increasing a person’s financial capability can involve helping them to plan and save for the future, to avoid debt and, of course, to learn about the common forms of financial abuse.
Free Online Financial Abuse and Financial Capability Training
We have a free eLearning course focused on financial abuse and financial capability. We designed it to help people take control of their finances while learning to spot the signs of financial abuse.
The course includes information, interactive tasks, videos, and quizzes to help you understand more about financial capability, along with the risks of financial abuse and exploitation. It also provides some guidance on how we can safeguard ourselves against these risks.
Ann Craft Trust CEO Stuart Sale said:
Learn More About Our Free Financial Capability CourseThese cases highlight how this awful, systematic abuse can occur for a number of years before anyone spots that there’s a problem. It’s therefore crucial that we are all aware of what financial abuse looks like, no matter who we are or what we do.
Our free course provides a useful introduction to spotting the signs of financial abuse, while also helping people think about financial capability. So as well as helping people look out for others, it can also help people look out for themselves.