AARP BankSafe Research Report

Every year, millions of older Americans lose significant portions of their life savings to financial exploitation — that is, the improper use of another person’s resources through deceit, coercion, fraud, undue influence, and other means.

Recognizing the key role played by financial institutions — and particularly their front-line staff — in identifying and stopping financial abuse, AARP developed BankSafe, an online interactive training specifically for bank and credit union staff. BankSafe is a self-paced training with an emphasis on gamification and a focus on prevention, as opposed to simply recognizing and reporting exploitation.

In partnership with the Virginia Tech Center for Gerontology, AARP completed a six-month pilot of the first-of-its-kind training to quantify the impact of training financial industry staff on preventing financial exploitation.