During her 30-year banking career, Margaret Easton occasionally found herself in awkward situations.
She'd be watching an elderly man take out large sums of cash from his bank account for no apparent reason and was powerless to do anything about it. Was he being coerced by someone to take out the cash or was he simply buying a new car?
Easton didn't know but she hoped for the best.
Privacy laws prevented her from asking questions and once when she kindly suggested that someone rethink their cash withdrawals and consider other options, such as automatic withdrawals, she was told it was none of her business.
"You've got to expect it," said Easton about the desire people have to protect their privacy and the financial and regulatory system that ensures those privacy rights aren't violated.
Still, how do you know when a senior is a victim of coercion or financial abuse? Easton believes there are instances where seniors are victims of financial abuse and the perpetrators of the abuse - often family members - are protected by the privacy laws that surround financial transactions.
"The number of seniors is growing and the instances of reported financial abuse is growing, too," said Easton, a Port Coquitlam resident, quoting Statistics Canada data from 2007 that 7% of seniors have experienced some form of financial abuse .
Easton believes there must be ways to shield seniors from financial abuse, and she's started a business, MAP, the Meridian Aging Project, offering information to businesses and financial institutions about the issues surrounding the financial affairs of seniors. Among the topics she would cover in her training, would include information on the conditions that make seniors susceptible to financial abuse, and practical solutions such as education and outreach, general detection and universal screening and legal interventions to prevent it.
"What as an industry can we create as far as services and tools that would increase the safety for seniors," Easton said.
Her long years in banking, capped with recent studies in mediation and gerontology puts Easton in a unique place to help both financial organizations and seniors. Among the first orders of business is to end stereotypes that seniors are incompetent when it comes to managing their money. In fact, she says, studies have found that seniors are no worse than most people in managing their finances, and in fact their financial wisdom grows in their mid-50s.
What seniors do experience is the rose-coloured glasses effect, Easton said, they choose to emphasize the positive over the negative and as a result are not always as suspicious as they could be. "So little is known about the psychology of aging," said Easton, acknowledging that seniors have the same right to make a bad decision as anybody else.
The trick is recognizing when they are being coerced by someone into making a damaging financial decision and having programs in place to provide information and support. Seniors and their families should know more about powers of attorney, which gives an individual the power to act on their behalf, Easton said, and financial institutions should be knowledgeable about trends in incapacity planning and upcoming regulatory changes.
"I have to emphasize, financial institutions are already doing their best, I'm talking about adding to what they are doing."
She's not alone in her assessment, the Canadian Task Force on Financial Literacy just released a report in February calling on governments, employers, educators and financial institutions to collaborate to improve the financial knowledge of Canadians.
"It needs to start with the youth and move up to seniors," Easton said.
For more information, visit www.meridianaging.com or call 604-789-4743.
