For more than five years, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has been committed to working in partnership with experts in the community to address domestic and family violence (DFV). In July 2020, CBA extended this commitment by launching Next Chapter, a program designed to address financial abuse for their customers and communities.

One of the key priorities under Next Chapter is to work in partnership with experts to increase community and industry understanding of financial abuse. 

To support this goal, CBA has partnered with the University of New South Wales Gendered Violence Research Network (GVRN) to develop a research series exploring current knowledge of financial abuse in Australia. GVRN has worked closely with CBA over a number of years to deliver training and develop their response to DFV and financial abuse.

Understanding Economic and Financial Abuse and Older People in the Context of Domestic and Family Violence is the fifth and final report in a series of evidence reviews planned under the partnership between CBA and GVRN. This research series represents a compendium of current evidence on economic and financial abuse and gaps in our current knowledge.

To develop this report, GVRN conducted a comprehensive review of academic and relevant policy literature to identify and analyse existing research on older people, economic and financial abuse. The significant over-arching finding from this evidence review is that there is a gap in the evidence base relating to the perpetration of economic and financial abuse against older people in the context of DFV.