Treasury's FinCEN Sends Elder Financial Exploitation Advisory

What You Need to Know

FinCEN is part of the Treasury Department.
It says it received 72,000 suspicious activity reports related to suspected elder financial exploitation in 2021.
The volume of reported suspected elder financial exploitation rose to $3.4 billion in 2020, from $2.6 billion in 2019.

An arm of the Department or the Treasury best known for fighting money laundering wants you to help it fight financial exploitation of older adults, too.

The Treasury arm, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, on Wednesday observed World Elder Abuse Awareness Day by asking financial institutions to speak up when they see “red flags.”

Life insurers, mutual fund companies and many other financial services providers qualify as financial institutions for FinCEN purposes, and they are supposed to file the same types of suspicious activity reports, or SARs, for suspected elder financial exploitation that they would file for suspected money laundering.

Some types of exploitation could involve relatives, unrelated con artists or others trying to tap a client’s mutual funds, annuities or cash-value life insurance policies.

What It Means

Financial advisors are not directly responsible for filing SARs, but the companies that do file SARs are supposed to tell advisors how to let them know about potential problems.