She's On The Money - Identifying The Signs of Financial Abuse

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Today we're thrilled to be joined by Caroline Wall, who has dedicated her life's work to identifying and ending financial abuse. Caroline chats with Victoria about the misconceptions around, and signs of financial abuse, the role of technology in both enabling and ending financial abuse, and how you can seek help for yourself or someone you care about. For immediate crisis support relating to domestic violence or sexual abuse, you can also contact 1800RESPECT online or at 1800 737 732. In an emergency or if you’re not feeling safe, always call 000.  Good ShepherdCommBank Next Chapter   Acknowledgement of Country By Natarsha Bamblett aka Queen Acknowledgements. The advice shared on She's On The Money is general in nature and does not consider your individual circumstances. She's On The Money exists purely for educational purposes and should not be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision. If you do choose to buy a financial product, read the PDS, TMD and obtain appropriate financial advice tailored towards your needs.  Victoria Devine and She's On The Money are authorised representatives of Money Sherpa PTY LTD ABN - 321649 27708,  AFSL - 451289.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello, my name is Natasha Nabanunga-Bamblett. I'm a proud Yorta Yorta, Kernai, Wolperi and Awadjeri woman. And before we get started on She's on the Money podcast, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land of which this podcast is recorded on Awadjeri country, acknowledging the elders, the ancestors and the next generation coming through. As this podcast is about connecting, empowering, knowledge sharing and the storytelling of you to make a difference for today and lasting impact for tomorrow. Let's get into it. She's on the money.

She's on the money. hello and welcome to she's on the money the podcast for millennials who want financial freedom. I'm your host, Victoria Devine, and today we're shining a light on an often hidden form of domestic violence, financial abuse. We are joined by a woman whose life work is all about identifying and ending financial abuse. Her name is Caroline Wall, and she's from the Commonwealth Bank. Caroline, welcome to the show. I'm actually very excited to have you here because this is something we need to be breaking open so much more often. Thank you for having me. No, of course. Before we get into, I have a lot of questions, but before we get into all of those

questions, I did just want to give this episode a content warning. I know that our topic is financial abuse, but I did want to let you know that for immediate crisis support relating to domestic violence or sexual abuse, you can also call 1-800-RESPECT and in an emergency or if you're not feeling safe, please always call 000. But today we are talking about recognizing the signs of financial abuse, how it presents in relationships, where to access help and what different services can be provided and so much more. But first, Caroline, I'm very excited to have you here because I want to know so much more about your work. I know you've worked in this space for a very long time. Tell me about how long you've worked in this space and what led you to,

I guess, have this as a passion for your entire career? Thank you. I've worked in the area of customer vulnerability for close on 10 years now. I work at the moment in a team of specialists that really represent the voice of a customer inside a large financial institution and to make sure that we're working with community organisations to make sure people's voices are heard and understood and that they're treated fairly when trying to access and undertake their banking. One of my key focus areas is very much family and domestic violence and the notion of financial abuse and trying to understand how banking products and banking services can be misused or weaponized by perpetrators of family and domestic violence to make sure that we're considering ways to develop

products in a way that really centers the safety of our customers into the product's design. Why this space? Gosh, financial abuse and family and domestic violence continues to be one of the most significant challenges that we face as a society today. And I was really drawn to working in this area back around 2015 when our organization started to look at the issues surrounding domestic violence and financial abuse to understand the role that finances often play in keeping people trapped in abusive relationships. And it's wild that that, you know, even in 2024 is so prevalent, like it breaks my heart. I feel like it is a massive privilege to be leading the She's on the money community like it's literally my favorite thing in the entire world but one of

the really heartbreaking parts of she's on the money is I'm often a very trusted human that if you're experiencing financial abuse and don't really know what that looks like or how that works I get an influx of messages so sadly I know a lot about this having worked in financial advice and worked in this space I just feel that it is so much more prevalent but we don't seem to understand fully what that looks like. Caroline, how did you fall into the space of customer vulnerability? What did that look like? Because I know you've been in it for 10 plus years, but do you finish university and go, all right, well, I'd really like to work in this space? Or is it something like, how do you get into this area of work? It's a great question. There's no degree that

I'm aware of that is a customer vulnerability expert. That's why I'm asking. You don't go to for this. My background is actually philosophy and politics. So not particularly relevant to the work that I'm doing today. Yes, it is. People who do philosophy and politics, you know what those people do? They care a lot. Like you don't study philosophy or politics if you don't want to instigate change, do you? Well, that's true. And I've always been interested, as you say, in instigating change through a series of roles, starting out in investor relations. So looking at corporate social responsibility, sort of how big companies can do good spent a number of years sort of working in that space and examining you know shareholder

activism and you know environmental and social governance for big companies and from there ended up over in Australia about 10 years ago in case you can't tell from my accent I am English what that's not Australian despite 10 years I still can't get quite rid of the British twang but started working for a bank over here in Australia and it was round about the time that a new Banking Code of Practice came into effect, which really started to introduce some social policy for banks to consider. So the role of supporting customers who, due to their personal or situational circumstances, may have challenges accessing banking. For the majority of people, using digital banking is not an issue or going to your local branch is not an issue. But for some people,

they can face really challenging barriers to maintaining their banking. And so I started to work in that space to understand the role of financial institutions in making it easier for people to access what is essentially an essential service. Yeah. And I feel like this space is really misunderstood as well. We've been trying to do, you know, over the years that She's on the Money has existed, a lot of work to educate people on what financial abuse looks like. And we have been so privileged to have money diarists come on the show that say I've experienced this or you know this is you know my reality or I've gotten out of this and it's really inspiring to see that but I think that has opened my eyes up and our community's eyes up to the idea that

financial abuse isn't just your partner abusing you know the system or abusing you through money we've seen you know people come on the show and talk about how they're being financially abused by parent. We've seen people who have lost money through cousins abusing them financially. So I want to kind of talk to you about what you believe are the biggest misconceptions about financial abuse. What does that actually look like? Because I think so many times, especially if we have the privilege of never having experienced that, we just don't assume, like we just don't get it. And it's not really the reality of the situation, right? Absolutely. And I think, you know, there are a lot of misconceptions around what financial abuse is, but also what it isn't. It's very much

a hidden epidemic still, certainly, you know, in Australia and probably globally as well, which really just means it's not very well understood. There's an estimated 90% of people who seek support for other forms of family and domestic violence, who also say that they've been affected by financial or what's sometimes called economic abuse. Yet people just don't recognise the signs. And that's because there's just a lack of awareness about what it is. So when you talk about someone restricting or accessing another person's access to money, be that their partner or a family member, we might view them as sort of being a bit of a bad actor or acting in an inappropriate way. but we rarely very rarely think about it as a form of actual abuse yet it really is a form of family and domestic violence and so how do we dispel some of the misconceptions right because there's nothing wrong with one person in a relationship managing money right let's be

clear about that that in itself is not financial abuse but if one person is managing all of the money in a relationship but not consulting with the other person and that they don't have a say in that decision that then becomes a potentially abusive situation and so what we're really looking at here is someone deliberately using money or other resources to gain power and control over someone else it's all about the power dynamic between individuals so that could be you know not being allowed to be able to make decisions about how your household income is spent. It could be being denied money for basic expenses. It could be being forced to take out a loan in your name. And the reason that we often use the term perpetrator or user of violence is because

it's not an accident. We're not talking about someone accidentally using the joint account for a large personal expense. We're talking about a choice that one person makes to use money to control their partner or ex-partner. And I think probably the last thing, common misconception is that it's just women who can experience financial abuse. It is largely a gendered issue, which means women are predominantly affected, but men can be affected by financial abuse too. And certainly we know that people in the LGBTIQA plus community and people in same-sex relationships are in fact even more likely to be impacted by financial abuse than people in heterosexual relationships and I think that's not known and so a lot of men who may experience this form of abuse kind of

minimize it and and don't realize it's an issue because we just don't speak about it. It's really heartbreaking actually because when I have conversations in our communities sometimes they just start off as what you know the person messaging me might assume is relatively innocent and they'll say, oh, hey, V, I was just wondering, like, my boyfriend does X, Y and Z. And I was just wondering, like, is this normal? Or should I ask him in a different way? Or he doesn't let me have access to my money because he says that I'm really bad at it. And I just, I don't think I'm that bad at it. And you kind of have to dig a little bit deeper, ask a few questions. And then it's really hard to say, hey, I don't know how to tell you this in a lighter way, but what's occurring is

actually financial abuse and we need to deal with that. And I think a lot of the time that can be really confronting because we have this misconception in our head that abuse is physical or it's verbal, not that it could be financial. I think to us, you just go, no, that's not it. Like he's just better at money or, you know, he thinks he's better at money and you just don't consider how that works. And I just think to me, that's heartbreaking. And sadly, it is nothing new. Can we talk about, I guess, how the modern world, I feel so old saying that, but how does technology play into this? Because I feel like historically it was, you know, you got your pay slip and you went home and a lot of things were done in cash and you might not have had cash,

but it's also a technological issue these days. What role has technology been playing in making things sadly more prevalent? Technology has many advantages and I'm sure we'll get onto that, in a moment. But with sort of the rise and increase in digital banking and other forms of technology comes new forms of abuse. What I would say is that, you know, users of violence or perpetrators are very, very smart at understanding and using technology in a way that it was never intended or designed to be used and to control, you know, track, stalk and intimidate people. So there's a whole new term right that's called technology facilitated abuse which speaks specifically to how technology can be used as a form of controlling behavior now that's sort of

broader than just the banking or financial context so it can include everything from forbidding someone from having a mobile phone limiting who they can contact it could be making continuous or controlling threats or phone calls to someone or text messages with the sole purpose of sort of harassing or stalking them we see instances of people being forced to take photos of where they are to disclose their location to prove that they are when they say they are and also surveillance and stalking and i think that's one of the primary concerns from a banking and tech perspective that we have and a lot of people seeking help for other forms of family and domestic violence, a very high percentage of those individuals, when they go into a safe house

or they seek support from a community organization, discover that there is some sort of surveillance technology on either their phone or their car. Now, when it comes to banking, that can be particularly dangerous because if someone's got access to your phone, they also have access to your online banking. So even if you follow all the steps that a financial institution will tell you to do to secure your banking, like changing your passwords or using different types of multi-factor authentication. If someone has spyware on your device and you don't know it, you can change your password as many times as you want and that person is still going to be able to access your finances

or your location. Some recent really disturbing trends of people misusing what we call the transaction field in a banking transfer. So if I were to send you money... I've seen this in our community it's wild absolutely and it's not the kind of terminology you'd expect right so not only are people using profanity in those description fields which you know is relatively easy to block it's very nuanced language that is relevant only to the person receiving it so you know have you checked that the dogs are still outside today right might just seem like an innocent question, you know, to most people. But if you know that your partner or ex-partner has made threats against the safety of your animals, that then becomes a really intimidating message

to receive. And, you know, we review, I think in my team alone, about 1500 high risk cases a year where we're concerned about the safety of the individuals. And in most of those cases, there may be, you know, anti-violence orders in place against the person. So no contact order. Now you can change your address you can change your phone number you can block someone off social media interestingly one of the things that you actually can't do is stop someone from sending you money if they have your bsb and account number and you know in in intimate partner relationships it could be that you have children together right and you need child support payments and if the only way to get child support payments is for those payments to come from your partner or ex-partner

then you are leaving them an open field of communication to be able to send you know harassing stalking or threatening messages so that's just one way that we see technology increasing the risk for people experiencing some forms of financial abuse what do we do if we're in that situation i've seen it pop up a couple of times in our community and for those of you who thankfully might not know what we're talking about we sometimes see people who have been blocked on every single account and they can't call you, they can't message you, they don't have your email, they don't have your address, they'll transfer one cent with threatening messages. And we've seen it where it's hundreds of messages a day, sometimes just

a message here and there to let you know that they're still around. And it's a very large form of abuse. But what can we do, Caroline? Because I feel like in those situations, a lot of people throw their hands up and go, I'm helpless here. Like, I don't know what to do now. Like, I thought I'd done absolutely everything I could. Who do we talk to? What do we do? Where do we go? Yeah, great, great question. And it depends on the situation you're on. And what I would say to anyone experiencing any form of financial abuse or other forms of abuse is you're the one who knows your situation the best, right? And what is safe for you to do. If it's not safe for you to take action then obviously you need to be you know make that decision yourself if you don't need

money from the person who's sending you abuse you can contact your bank most banks now across Australia have programs in place to help people experiencing this form of abuse so I'd say first and foremost approach your bank and tell them what's happening there are some circumstances where actually you may want those descriptions as evidence of a breach of an anti-violence order right and if that's the case you might not want them to stop because that might be the only evidence that you have that your perpetrator is trying to contact you and breaching an avio so in those cases you can still let your bank know just what you're experiencing but that you don't want any action taken for the time being because you are using that as evidence of part of a broader

police investigation if you do want that abuse to stop there's a couple of options most banks can set up what's called safe bank accounts which is a brand new bank account with a different you know BSB and account number. You can also look at getting an account number where the BSB doesn't show your location. So for many people who don't know, the BSB code before your account number actually stands for whatever branch your account is opened in. So if you've opened an account in person, there is a unique code which will tell you where that account is home to or domiciled to. That's so smart. That's something I literally never thought about. And I know that my BSB is my local bank account or like my local suburb of where my parents live because that's where I opened

my first bank account when I got my first job and I hadn't thought about it. So it can disclose your location yeah so especially if you've moved and you want to keep your address a secret and you don't want someone to know what area you're living in you can open your account online. So most of the time when you open an account online depending on your bank you get a digital BSB which can't be track to a particular location as opposed to doing it in a branch that's really smart if your tech is being surveilled and you do need to go to a branch let them know and they can open one often with a different BSB that you know might be in Victoria or in Queensland so that you know you can't be tracked to that location so you can set up a safe bank account that way and that way your perpetrator

doesn't have your account details so they can't send you money now that won't work if you need money from the person. So if you do need to keep receiving money, unfortunately, there's a whole load of background regulation that means your bank can't actually hide the description that is sent with a transfer. But what they can do is take action in many cases. So I know at least probably about 10 or more banks across Australia will send warning letters to people who are misusing banking platforms in this way. And they all have terms and conditions which say it's unacceptable behavior. And so they can send a warning letter to the person to say, look, we've noticed some behavior on your account that's in breach of the bank's terms and conditions. Please cease.

Otherwise, we may take further action. If that continues, and certainly for the bank that I work at, we can actually remove someone's access to digital banking so that they can't send a description with a transfer. They can still set up an automated payment, but they don't get the option to add that description into the description field. And in some cases, if the abuse continues and it is causing severe harm to the victim and it's possible to do so, a bank may actually look at closing that customer's account because it really is no place for abuse. And all of the industry is very clear on taking a stance against financial abuse in this way. I really like that it's across the industry. I know when CBA approached me and she's on the

money to work together to talk about this topic because it is so important. One of the things that I was like was like, look, I really want to talk about this topic, but I don't want to align to a specific bank on it because it's an international issue. It's not just an issue that one bank is dealing with. I think my favorite thing is that CTO is like, no, no, no, we'll help anyone who's with any bank. We're just here. We just want to get rid of this. Is that something, one, I feel like that's very different to the way a lot of banks and a lot of the industry work, right? They go oh well we offer a b c and d for our customers and cba is a bit different they are offering this help for literally anybody who needs it how was that decision made because that's not a small

decision that's a that's a massive undertaking cba have always had a position and a lot of the industry you have the same position right which is that tackling the issue of financial abuse is not an area of competitive advantage for the bank or for any bank. And if we as the largest organization at CBA in Australia have the resourcing data capability to be able to identify and proactively put support measures in place, then we want to make sure that we are sharing that with organizations who don't have the same size and scale that we do. And so we made a decision for everything from how we detect this form of abuse we use ai to try and detect this form of abuse which picks up that nuanced messaging that doesn't just contain profanity

right we actually put that on a platform called github and made it open source so that any bank can pick up that model oh i love that yeah and put it into their own data sets to use the same sort of algorithms and the same machine learning that we had developed over sort of 18 months to detect this form of abuse. And we've had conversation with banks in England, we've had conversations with banks in Canada, who are also starting to see platforms being misused in this way to say, hey, look, we've done the work, right? We spent two, three years looking at this issue, developing solutions and technology to detect it. So why don't we make that available? And the same goes for our support services. Predominantly, you know, our specialist family and domestic

violence and financial abuse teams do support our own customers but you know not everyone banks with a particular bank or if you want a safe account what we also recommend by the way is if you are experiencing financial abuse and you want to regain control of your financial independence the best way to do that is to set up an account that your perpetrator doesn't bank with so if you're a cba customer you know find a different bank if you're with one of the other big four you know pick a different bank to have your safe accounts with just to ensure that there is you know absolutely no way that that person can access it's such a clean yeah get access to your banking services so if we can do anything to try and tackle the issue as an industry we are all very

much in agreement that it's an industry issue and that we want to work together to try and solve for it i couldn't agree more and i just i really like obviously the idea of collaboration over competition in a space that it shouldn't even be a conversation like it should just be like wow this makes sense but you can also go you know from a business perspective right you would look at it and be like well CBA spent literally millions of dollars creating this code and creating this plan and then they're just giving it away I think that says a lot to how serious they are about stamping this out and how serious they are about you know making sure that everybody has financial freedom and everybody isn't constrained by this because I mean abuse comes in so many different forms but

financial abuse is something that is really nuanced it's really it can be quite sneaky and the people that are using financial abuse as a way to get to their victim you could say they are very sneaky and it does involve a lot more deep diving than just you know having keywords come up so Caroline let's go to a really quick break on the flip side I have a few other things I want to talk to you about specifically around how do we identify that we might be in a financially abusive relationship if we are umming and erring about whether that's something that we are in. And I kind of want to know about how we can help ourselves or help others. So guys, don't go anywhere. All right, guys, we are back. And today I have the absolute privilege of having a chat

with Carolyn Wall, who's from CBA, but she has devoted her entire life's work to identifying and ending financial abuse, which is something that I am also wildly passionate about and think we need to give a lot more airtime to. But Caroline, I want to talk now about how we identify the signs of financial abuse, because they're often not that clear. It's not something that often our friends can pick up, sadly, and it's not something that we often want to, I would say, admit to, because it can be really hard to admit to that or really identify that. So I want to get into it now. What are the signs that someone might be in a financially abusive relationship? It's really difficult sometimes, as you said, to identify a situation

when you're in it. And that's especially true for something like financial abuse, because what we often see is it starting as what seems to be relatively innocent actions, right? That could be anything from a partner suggesting that you open a joint account and put both of your incomes into the joint account. Again, on its own, not an issue. But then you see slightly less innocent looking requests. Well, could you just take this loan out in your name because I've got bad credit and they might deny me for this loan. I'll pay it back. I just need you to have your name on the application. Or why don't you stop working so that you can take better care of the kids and I'll go out and do the work and then I can just give you an allowance for daily

expenses. While some of those individual instances may not be a problem, what we do see is it escalating over time. So some of the things that we would consider red flags would be, as I mentioned, forcing someone to take out debts in their own name that they're getting no benefit from. We also see perpetrators taking out debts in someone else's name without their knowledge. Yes, we had a money diarist where that happened. And she was the most beautiful human being. She had more than $130,000 worth of debt taken out in her name. And it's an interesting conversation. Sorry to completely sidestep this, but I think it's so relevant. But when we spoke to her, I think a lot of people would have been listening along going, oh my gosh, go to the

police, get rid of it, put it all back in his name. And when we spoke to her, she said, look, me. I was just so over it. I made a plan and I paid all of that debt off on my own because I just didn't want to have to go through the trauma of getting through that. You see it a lot, but I feel like a lot of us would be listening to this and going, well, that's not the right thing to do. You should definitely seek help. And you should seek help. We should get support. But the person who knows best is the person in that situation. It's often like when you hear about an abusive situation, you go, well, Caroline, why didn't you just leave? And it's not the answer. Like often the answer needs to come from how that person feels the safest and how that person, you know,

thinks that the other person might react because it's all about staying safe and putting yourself in the best possible position. And sometimes that looks a lot different to what people might think is the best thing. And that's what we say, right? So going back to misconceptions, that's another great misconception, right? Well, why didn't you just leave when you found out about it or when they denied you access to money why didn't you you know leave at that point and it's really not that simple there are so many hurdles to leaving an abusive relationship I mean even if you think about you know a relationship breakdown of a healthy relationship once you've combined money with your partner it's incredibly difficult to disentangle who owns what who gets what share

of what and that's in a healthy relationship you then add sort of layers of coercive control threats intimidation you know fear of retribution and it becomes incredibly difficult to see a pathway out especially where financial abuse you know is concerned or if you've got dependents because how do you leave if you don't have your own bank account how do you leave if the only access to money that you have is in a joint account that your partner or ex-partner has the only card to leaving is easy if you've got money but if your money is being controlled it becomes even harder for you to leave because you are so tangled up and interdependent with that person on finances that often it seems like there is no safe way out so yeah it's definitely not as easy

as as just leaving even when you see some of these you know red flags and there's a few right you know and they also depend on your background so you know if you are from a migrant and refugee background that becomes harder still right and we see cases across the bank and banking industry of you know the weaponization of everything from visas so if you come over to this country and you're not on a permanent residence visa or you don't have citizenship your visa status becomes another way that someone can exert control over you you know if you don't do what I say then I'm gonna report you to the authorities or I'm gonna withdraw financial support for your visa and that's terrifying absolutely like that's terrifying because often you've left that

circumstance because it's dangerous in the first place and now you're in a dangerous one here and you're just a rock and a hard place because you don't want to go home but you also don't want to be where you are like and then you add language barriers to that and cultural barriers like you know i think people find it difficult to navigate the financial system you know in western countries even if you are born and grow up here you then add you know people who were born overseas and who have very different financial systems from the one that we have in australia you know a lot of people don't know the difference between debit and credit so we say oh we just make sure you don't sign anything that you don't understand but if someone's explaining something to you and

your partner and they're saying, well, this is what it is and they're not being truthful or that you don't have an understanding of the difference between debit and credit, you know, that then becomes even harder for people as well. And that to me is the most heartbreaking part about it because often, and you know, as you were saying before, everyone can experience financial abuse, but sadly it's predominantly women. But often as women, we go, oh, they would know better. Or yeah I don't really understand that and I don't really want to put my hand up because it's a bit embarrassing that I don't know the difference between that when it's not embarrassing it's a language you've never learned it's a conversation you've never had why would you know but to me I

just go this is where the power of financial literacy comes into it having an understanding of you know what these things are at a base level I often talk on our show about how if you want to live in a relationship where your partner does all the finance things because it's just not for you I love that for you. But what I want you to do is be fully able to always access those accounts. I want you to be able to know how to pay a bill when it comes time to being able to do that. So many times I have sat down with women who I had one particular case where this woman was incredibly wealthy. Her partner was worth millions, but she didn't understand a thing. All she knew was that she had an Amex and a credit card and he paid it off every month and

she was the stay-at-home mom of their five kids. And they had a very, very nice life. But when it came time to leaving that relationship, she had no idea how. And it wasn't financially abusive, but the finances were what was constraining her. And I sat down and said, okay, cool, where are your bank accounts? And she's like, V, I don't know. I don't even know if we have bank accounts with CBA or with NAB or with one of the other banks. I wouldn't have a clue. All I know is that I put all our expenses on this credit card and it gets paid off. And so it was like starting from absolute scratch. So this type of conversation and financial abuse isn't just for people who don't have lots of money and are controlled by it in that way. Money can be

controlling at any level. And I think that that's something that's also a massive misconception that financial abuse is a problem when you don't have lots of money. No, it's definitely, we see it across all different socioeconomic backgrounds. You can have private bank accounts and a private banker and still be at risk of financial abuse. And sometimes the more assets and the more money that you have, the greater the risk, right? Because while most perpetrators are not actually driven by the money, just to say, they're driven by using money to control someone. Yeah, they don't actually care about the dollars. They care about the fact that they've still got you under their thumb and they want to be able to do that. And yeah, it's disgusting. And I think that it's really admirable how much work you're doing in this space. I mean, it's your entire career. And to me, it speaks volumes that a bank would employ someone to do this to make sure that we're okay. It makes me really happy that this is something that we're working more on. if we're listening to this and going through this maybe ourselves and we're like oh that's a couple of red flags that have come up i'm feeling a bit uncomfortable or you're maybe going oh that's a friend or that's a family member or that's you know someone i work with how do we start to help ourselves like where can we access help what are things that we can do for ourselves to put us in

the best possible position for ourselves or for you know our community firstly i'd say i'd just like to acknowledge that anyone experiencing financial abuse you know it can feel very frightening and isolating so if you know and perpetrators will deliberately cut off access often to your friends and families to create that sense of isolation and that sense of dependency on someone else so if you think you are experiencing financial abuse you recognize any of these signs of abuse it's often really helpful to have a conversation with someone you trust to start with, even before you think about going to any specialist services, because experiencing this form of abuse is real. And if you're told that you're paranoid or that you're

making things up or, you know, I'm just managing the money because it's in your best interest and I'm doing what's right for you, you can end up second guessing or questioning yourself and saying, well, actually, maybe it's not that bad, right? But it is. So I'd say first and foremost, trust yourself trust what you're experiencing is real and it's really crucial at that time to sort of get as many people around you as support people around you as possible and it can be as simple as having a conversation so the same goes if you know someone experiencing financial abuse don't be scared to have a conversation with them you don't need to have all of the answers you don't need to be an expert in financial abuse you just have to have a gentle conversation

and encourage someone to get the support that they need. And that conversation could be a conversation that changes someone's life. So don't be too scared to sort of reach out and have that conversation. If you're experiencing financial abuse, first and foremost, if you're not feeling safe, always call 000, as you said at the beginning of this show.

The other service that we always recommend is, as you mentioned, 1-800-RESPECT. And the reason that we do that is because there are a lot of support services available across Australia and they may be regional they may be state-based you know they may be national services and it can be very overwhelming to try and identify what service is the right service for you so 1-800-RESPECT will be able to give you information about your local services they also have you know translating and interpreting services available if English isn't your first

language to help you navigate those systems and they're beautiful human beings as well I think something that when, you know, I don't know, I feel like it's a hurdle for a lot of people, especially in conversations I've had where if we sat down and you were explaining to me that you were going through this situation, I said, oh, Caroline, I actually think you should call 1-800-RESPECT. You might go, I don't know them. I don't know what they're going to say. I don't know if they're going to be judgmental, but these are beautiful human beings who dedicate their lives to helping you. Like that's their entire passion. Like you don't get a job at 1-800-RESPECT because you aren't interested in putting people in a better situation. But also, they're trained

to help you identify, one, what you're going through, but two, the services you need. And even if you don't know what you need, just calling and saying, hey, I really don't know what I need, but I think I need something, they might be able to put you in the best possible position. And they're also a brilliant person or a brilliant group to reach out to when you just don't feel like you want to have a conversation with someone in real life. Like maybe you don't, you're not ready to open up to your best friend about this because these things can feel overwhelming and they aren't embarrassing. I promise you are so smart and you are so educated. It's just something you don't understand. But I think that it's so important to remember that you can reach out to

these people and maybe even have a conversation about, hey, I just want to have a quick chat about like what I might be able to do. I'm not ready to do it, but I might be able to do it. And also, how do I bring it up with my friend if we go out to coffee? Like, those are things that these people can help you with. And I think so often we just think that things will get really serious if I make that call. Everything is on your terms. It's not on their terms. And as you were saying before, Caroline, you can tell the bank about what's going on and

say, please don't do anything about it. Like, the power is in your hands. And I think that when we're going through something like this, we often think that the power is going to be stripped from us if we, you know, reach out to somebody else because they might quote know better but you are the one who knows the best about this situation and every single resource is going to be used based on how you think it's going to work for you not how somebody else thinks it's going to be you know the best they're not going to swoop in and change things they're going to actually help you and put you in the best possible position and i think

that's so important to understand so caroline are there any other ways that we can reach out you know whether we are victim survivors of financial abuse or we are trying to help our friends and family or people around us. We've got 1-800-RESPECT. I know that CBA has a brilliant offering. How do we get in contact with CBA and are there any other resources that we should know about? Absolutely. Look, CBA has a program called Next Chapter and that comprises of a number of things, including a team of banking specialists. And they're not trained counsellors. They are specialists in safe banking options. Now, as we were talking about earlier, we extended that support not just to CBA customers but to anyone across Australia regardless of who you bank with

and they really can help you understand you know how to secure your banking they can also make referrals to specialist financial organizations such as a partnership that we have with Good Shepherd called the Financial Independence Hub now that might not be right for everyone but they offer long-term financial counseling to help you re-establish your independence once you're safe So they're not a crisis support service, but they are available to help you do things like separate, you know, finances to budgets to provide long term financial counseling options to help you really, you know, understand your finances and get back on track again. Good Shepherd are gorgeous as well. I've done some work with them historically, and I don't think a lot of people know who they are or what they do, but they essentially enable personal agency capability and confidence to help you lead really dignified outcomes when it comes to income, financial health and well-being. and they run financial literacy workshops and they talk about how to set up your banking if you're starting from scratch or even they have a NILS. I was going to say great NILS program.

They have a NILS program. So, it's no interest loans. So, if you find yourself in a pickle, they can help you either refinance a loan that you have and you're struggling with, but NILS is a no interest loan. And often there's a lot of criteria you will need to meet for this. it's not like, oh, hey, I would love a no interest loan because same, but it's more for getting you out of financially pressing situations or making sure that you have access to things that you need. But as you were saying, they're not a emergency service, but they are a beautiful service to know about. And I'm obsessed with them. Like the idea that they exist is so, so nice. But that alongside next chapter, I think are a really good team of people to put you in the best

possible position. The only other one I'd probably reference again is if you're in the LGBTIQ plus sort of rainbow community, Full Stop Australia run a dedicated phone service which is called the Rainbow Sexual Domestic and Family Violence Helpline. Now they are trained and they are a safe service for people in the community and really understand the unique needs of people in the community when seeking support for family and domestic violence. So they're also a great resource to refer to as well. I love that. Oh my gosh. I'm going to make sure you guys don't have to take notes. I'm going to make sure that all of those resources outlined in our show notes with links so that it makes it as easy as possible. But Caroline, it has been so beautiful

having this conversation with you. I feel like it's the right step in the right direction when it comes to hoping to end financial abuse. The work that you do is so special and I think it would be really taxing on you as well to be diving every single day into this situation but you're putting so many people in better positions I'm so grateful that we have you in our community and get to share you with everyone but we'll have you on the show again at some point hopefully to talk a little bit deeper about this topic because I think it's something that we really need to deeply understand but thank you for joining us it's been a pleasure and I know that our community is so much better off having had this chat

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