Your clients are under threat – how can you help?
The Personal Finance Society (PFS) has released a new Good Practice Guide aimed at helping financial advisers support clients experiencing economic abuse.
The guide provides strategies for identifying and mitigating the financial exploitation of victim-survivors through life insurance products.
According to data from the charity Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA), one in seven women in the UK has faced economic abuse from a current or former partner in the past year. The PFS guide, developed in response to SEA’s 2023 report, highlights how financial advisers can use their expertise to prevent the misuse of financial products by perpetrators.
SEA’s findings indicate that life insurance policies can often be difficult to untangle without the consent of both parties, which can leave victim-survivors vulnerable to continued control post-separation.
The guide addresses the complexities of setting up life insurance policies in trust, offering best practices to minimise the risk of abuse. It also provides a list of recommendations for advisers, such as collaborating with insurance providers to safeguard the interests of victim-survivors and fostering environments where clients feel comfortable sharing their experiences.
“The aim of this Good Practice Guide is to provide a starting point for advisers either looking to refresh their knowledge of economic abuse or to explore further how they can support clients experiencing economic abuse,” said Carla Brown (pictured), president of the Personal Finance Society board.
“The financial services industry has a crucial role to play in this, and while we understand how to use financial tools to get the best for our clients, we should also be able to identify and avoid policies or products which perpetrators might use to facilitate economic abuse.”
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