Bank accounts reveal the fingerprints of abusive financial control

Nick Howe (0:04)

Nature, I don't know yet.

Nicola Sharpe-Geefs (0:06)

Why is life so far?

Dan Fox (0:08)

Like, it sounds so simple.

Nicola Sharpe-Geefs (0:09)

They had no idea.

Benjamin Thompson (0:10)

But now the data's...

SPEAKER_5 (0:12)

I find this not only refreshing, but at some level astounding.

Benjamin Thompson (0:23)

Welcome back to The Nature Podcast. This week, how banking records can provide more insights into financial abuse.

Nick Howe (0:31)

And an explanation to a curious change in the length of days.

Benjamin Thompson (0:36)

I'm Nick Patrick-Howe, and I'm Benjamin Thompson.

Quick warning here. Our next story is going to be focusing on a form of domestic abuse. Specifically, one known as financial abuse.

Financial abuse involves a person controlling someone else's money or finances. Perhaps by rationing their access to cash, or preventing them having access to their bank accounts. Other examples might include an abuser taking out debt in their partner's name without their consent, or sabotaging their finances. Financial abuse can have long-term impacts on the person affected, with victim survivors being burdened with debts or damaged credit scores, for example, which can make achieving financial independence and stability tough. It's estimated that millions of people in the UK experience this form of abuse, with women being disproportionately affected. And yet, despite how widespread it is, it's been difficult to get information on how it affects people day to day.

Nicola Sharpe-Geefs (1:42)

It could be really difficult to document and then evidence non-physical forms of abuse. So obviously, you know, physical abuse can leave broken bones and bruises, but financial abuse and emotional abuse is a lot harder to evidence.

So we've had kind of small-scale surveys undertaken with victim survivors as domestic abuse, and then of course we do have larger surveys. The Crime Survey for England and Wales has looked to measure economic abuse. And for example, the Financial Life Survey, which the Financial Conduct Authority conduct.

But those sort of cross-sectional surveys really do only provide a snapshot of a victim survivor's experience. And also it is open to potential recall bias, particularly in the context of trauma. So, you know, there are limitations in terms of that self-reported data.

Benjamin Thompson (2:29)

This is Nicola Sharpe-Gefs from London Metropolitan University here in the UK.

Nicola is part of a team that includes researchers at Lloyds Bank, a large retail bank here in the UK. And they've been looking to get a better understanding of financial abuse using a different type of evidence. In a paper out in Nature this week, they document how they used anonymized banking records to compare the financial activity of women in the UK who had disclosed to the bank that they'd experienced financial abuse with those that hadn't, to get more of a detailed fingerprint of what it looks like. They hope that this information could be used to identify indicators of financial abuse and inform interventions and strategies to support victim survivors. I chatted with Nicola about the work, and she laid out a bit more about the data the team used.

Nicola Sharpe-Geefs (3:19)

So, Lloyds Banking Group has a specialist domestic and financial abuse team, and over the years, a number of customers have disclosed experiencing domestic abuse to the bank. So, we had a sample of victims and survivors who had disclosed experiencing financial abuse, and that was 5,428 customers.

Benjamin Thompson (3:38)

And you compared that then to a control group of bank records. What were you looking for?

Nicola Sharpe-Geefs (3:43)

So, we were able to compare the sample of customers who had disclosed abuse against a sample where there were no known disclosures, which represented over 15,000 customers who matched the demographic and socio-economic characteristics. And we were looking to see if there were any statistically significant differences in terms of their transactional and non-transactional behaviours.

Benjamin Thompson (4:06)

And let's talk about some of the key findings then, Nicola. What were some of the things that were different between the financial records of the women who were victim survivors and those from the control group?

Nicola Sharpe-Geefs (4:18)

So, overall, we saw that victim survivors of financial abuse were basically more likely to lose their financial independence, to experience economic instability and to suffer from financial distress. So, some of the key differences were the fact that they had depleting savings, that they had increased debts, that was culminating in missed payments, declining credit scores. We saw they were spending less money on self-care, so things like going to the dentist or the politicians or membership of sports clubs, for example, but they also incurred higher costs when it came to things like vehicle costs unsurprisingly as well. And they were also actually more likely over time to claim welfare benefits.