Financial Abuse, Economic Coercion and Creating Safety by Design

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (00:02)

I’m Catherine Fitzpatrick. a former bank executive turned social entrepreneur. I believe that safety isn’t accidental and nor is equity. Both of them are designed. I work with businesses, industry, government and regulators around the globe to show them how domestic abusers are misusing everyday products and services and how safer design can close those loopholes.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (00:32)

What if financial abuse isn’t a hidden issue, but a structural one? And what if it isn’t about bad actors, but about systems that lack safeguards? And then what if the most powerful form of prevention actually starts in their design? Today’s conversation is about the money we don’t talk about because as we know, money is often a taboo topic. The risks women aren’t taught to look for and the systems that need to change.

 

I’m Di Gellert and this is the Power of Women podcast. And my guest today has an extraordinary depth of understanding in this particular topic, both intellectually and structurally. Catherine Fitzpatrick has spent more than two decades inside Australia’s most powerful institutions, banking, government, ASX listed companies, and not-for-profits and media. And she’s seen up

 

close how financial systems can either protect people or in fact be weaponized against them. She’s led national reforms, advised regulators and governments and now as the founder of FLEQUITY Ventures is reshaping how financial products, services and policies are designed with safety at their core. Catherine doesn’t speak about financial abuse from theory. She speaks from evidence reform.

 

and lived proximity to harm. And given the abuses are ever present in society, conversations such as this one are essential. Catherine Fitzpatrick, welcome to the Power of Women podcast.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (02:16)

Thank you. I’m really excited to be having this conversation because not many people know about financial abuse, but also people don’t quite understand how products and services, everyday ones, are being manipulated to cause the harm. So I’m really excited to dive into that with you.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (02:33)

Fabulous and I think what I’d really love to be able to achieve for the listeners is highlighting the different forms in which it takes and some strategies to help put in place some of the safeguards for women in particular. But at the same point I want to touch on, because I know your passion about it, what men can do to help.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (03:00)

Yeah, there’s so many things that we can do individually, but also if you’re working in an organisation where you might not have seen before what’s going on, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And so you feel compelled to do something. And I think it’s been a real awakening for me when I first saw this happening.

 

quite a number of years ago and then for everyone I talked to the light bulb switches on and you just have to do something.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (03:32)

Brilliant and that’s exactly what you’re doing. So when people hear the term financial abuse, so many people think that’s kind of secondary to physical or emotional abuse. But from your perspective, is financial abuse a central mechanism of control?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (03:56)

Yes, absolutely. Financial abuse is when someone uses money or access to money to control or manipulate another person. And it is something that can happen very quietly by stealth over time. And it can be a precursor to physical violence or it could occur alongside physical violence. We know that financial abuse happens in

 

more than 90 % of cases where there are physical violence is being used, it is a form of domestic abuse. It is, and it is something that we know that financial abuse can often, or is most often accompanied by harassment and monitoring and tracking, which we’re seeing a lot more of.

 

as we’re moving to this digital society. ⁓ And it’s quite often what keeps women, mainly women, but not just women, trapped in a relationship that is really abusive and controlling and manipulating because they don’t have the means to leave, they don’t have the means to start again. And ⁓ we know from fantastic research that Anne Summers has done that it can often mean

 

a choice between violence or poverty.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (05:27)

neither of those are palatable. yeah. So you’ve said people don’t just weaponize ⁓ behavior, they weaponize products and services. Can you explain what that really looks like when we’re talking about banking, utilities, insurance, all of those points of financial engagement that we have ⁓ with institutions?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (05:55)

Absolutely. So if I talk a little bit more, I never want to excuse the behaviour of the person who is exerting control through access to money. So what this could look like in a relationship is that it could be limiting a partner’s access to money unless they do what you say. It could be tracking or challenging every dollar that they spend.

 

until they give up trying and they’re solely dependent on you. It could be belittling ⁓ your ability or their ability to manage money and until they just believe you, I’m so bad with money and they beg that you will take it over.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (06:39)

So money’s weaponized, it’s a psychological drip feed.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (06:44)

Absolutely. And it could also can be criminal, right? It could be racking up debt in somebody else’s name without their knowledge or consent. ⁓ And that’s done so that they can never leave, so that they can’t start again and so that they’ll regret breaking up with you if they do end up being able to leave that situation. ⁓ What we do know is that unlike physical violence, financial abuse often involves

 

the misuse of a product or a service ⁓ or a system. What do I mean by that? So in banking, it could look like racking up debt in somebody else’s name, taking out a credit card because you know enough about that person to be able to open it within minutes online without their knowledge and use that credit card and rack up that debt.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (07:39)

How would you know that’s happened, Catherine? Would you have any idea?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (07:43)

It’s really awful, but a lot of people don’t know what’s happened until it’s happened multiple times and they’re tens of thousands of dollars in debt. A way that you can make sure you’re keeping an eye on that, which is something we should all be doing in any case because of the rise of scams, is check your credit report. It’s free and you can do it online and some banks also will allow you to do it in their apps. But you can go online

 

check your credit report and you can see what debts you have. And I know I’ve looked at it, you know, in over the years and I do make sure I do it about twice a year. You can look at it and you can see, hang on a second, I never applied for this or there’s a credit card here that I didn’t know about. We’re seeing fraudsters do that all the time. So you need to be a bit hot on it too because one, there’s debt in your name.

 

to if that if you don’t pay it or if the person doesn’t pay it if they’re a criminal they’re not going to that liability puts a black mark on your credit score and that means if you got to apply for another loan or even if you’re applying for buy now pay later that with you you are and it

 

damages your score and then it impacts on your ability to get on with your own life. So it’s quite a bit to unpick it. So you should be taking a look at that. The other products that are weaponized, so I’ve done for the last three years, I’ve been writing what I call the perpetrator playbook for business. And it’s basically documenting the ways that abusers are misusing products and services. Not as a how-to guide, because they’ve actually already got it, but it’s.

 

how businesses could intervene, guide.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (09:36)

that, preventative strategy.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (09:39)

It is,

 

it is. so other examples would be in insurance. There were two big things that came through ⁓ research, which and ⁓ speaking to victim survivors. One is that if you have a joint policy with somebody, a lot of times you can change that policy online. It’s really simple to do that or with a really simple phone call. But

 

quite often the joint policy holder is not alerted to those changes. why? Yeah, it’s basically because insurers have taken the friction out of the system, which is really fantastic, right? You can do…

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (10:20)

There’s an upside and a downside to that. I mean, if your partner’s passed away? So there’s the upside, however.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (10:27)

However, if you are in an abusive situation, what we know is that abusers may cancel an insurance policy or change it without the co-insured knowing. I spoke to one woman ⁓ for my paper on general insurance who said that she didn’t know that the home insurance was cancelled.

 

until her ex-partner threatened to burn the house down with her and the children inside it.

 

And when she discovered that she was no longer insured to add salt into the wound, they had repaid the premium into his account, even though she’d been paying for it for many years. one of my recommendations was. insurers need to change the system and put a bit more friction into that. I’ve been really pleased. In fact, my own insurer, I saw a notification

 

saying that if you do make some changes we will notify the co-insured to make sure everyone’s happy with that. ⁓ Fantastic.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (11:37)

Yeah,

 

no surprises.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (11:41)

Yeah and I think

 

it does and there are really simple things like that that different organisations can do. Other examples just from everyday accounts, I looked at energy and water last year. Who would have thought your electricity account could be manipulated? The same with your

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (12:00)

I that’s something that I wouldn’t even think about as being at risk. So what happens there?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (12:07)

It basically anywhere, any type of service where it’s a joint account, so it’s in more than one name, or where there is credit or debt that’s related to it. So if you’re getting billing from an electricity provider or an energy provider or a water provider, they’re in effect giving you credit and you need to pay that back, right, when you pay your bill. So we know that debt is the weapon of choice for financial abusers.

 

what they will do is not pay it ⁓ and then leave that debt in your name. ⁓

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (12:46)

We

 

saw quite frequently. the ⁓ non-provision of that service in that being turned off.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (12:55)

Potentially water doesn’t get turned off but they might slow it but electricity certainly gets turned off. absolutely. The other thing that we see with any joint accounts or any online services and it doesn’t matter what kind of service it is, is that it’s really easy if you know enough about somebody to get in login to their account and see what they’re doing.

 

which means that abusers are using online access to monitor and to surveil their partner or ex-partner. And I can give you an example of this ⁓ where in banking where I used to work in a couple of Australia’s major banks, when you have an account, you can see who’s spending money where. A number of the banks have also got these really

 

great fraud protection, which is an alert whenever your account has some money taken out of it. When it’s a joint account and those alerts go to more than one person, or if it’s a credit card and they’re going to the primary credit card holder, and we know most of the time that is the male partner in a relationship and the female partner has a secondary card, the alerts might go to somebody.

 

and they can see what’s happening in that account. And if it’s a relationship where there is abuse, ⁓ then, or violence, then they can monitor what is happening. So, you know, taking money out at the ATM, for example, ⁓ or put it, squirreling money away so that you can flee that unsafe relationship, ⁓ that can all be monitored.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (14:45)

That’s that’s goosebumps stuff because it’s so ⁓ unexpected. It’s so easy to have somebody actually monitoring your movements and presumably that in the same way if you’ve moved that gives them access to your address and all sorts of other details that could leave somebody extremely vulnerable.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (15:13)

Yeah, most businesses have built their systems and their products and their services as if every relationship is healthy and that there isn’t any violence in it. Which means that the systems are built when that two people are enmeshed and they’re not necessarily being able to manage that account as if they’re two individuals in the one account.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (15:39)

That’s

 

a great example to understand what’s going on.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (15:43)

Yeah, and so if you think about it, the systems are built like that. I’ve worked inside big organisations. It’s millions and millions of dollars to unpick those systems. I joke about it, it’s a bit facetious, but I have said, you know, we’ve built the systems around the patriarchy and unpicking the patriarchy is really expensive.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (16:00)

Yes,

 

yep kind of heard that somewhere before.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (16:04)

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. I want to give you, yeah, I also just want to give you probably the example that crystallized things for me when I said, when I really understood how products and services are being weaponized was in 2019, I worked for Australia’s biggest bank, Commonwealth Bank, and I had set up a specialist team supporting

 

customers experiencing vulnerability and particularly we had a focus on people experiencing domestic abuse and also people experiencing problem gambling. And when I visited the team I was talking to them about the kinds of things they were doing to help our customers and one of them showed me in the account of a woman that she was helping these deposits into that account from the ex-partner.

 

and they were one cent at a time. And in the transaction description, you know where we would write, thanks for dinner, we might write the invoice number, we might say happy birthday. There were messages of abuse. And then I spoke to the team and I said, ⁓ is this happening all the time? Have you all seen this? And they said, yeah, we see it all the time. And it’s really chilling.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (17:12)

Yep.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (17:27)

when also we see the messages saying, love you, I want you back. It’s like a secret. It was. And so I had a team of data scientists and I said to them, can you just take a look at this and see what you can find? We’d only had one complaint to the bank about this, but they did ⁓ analysis and they looked through 11 million transactions in a three month period. And what they found was 8,000

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (17:33)

S.I.G.S.S.S.S. ⁓

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (17:57)

really serious forms of abusive messages. I read one, 900 messages, one cent at a time, it cost the abuser $9. It included messages like, I’m out the front, I can see you, I want to kill you, I want to kill them all.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (18:18)

What do do with that?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (18:20)

Well,

 

when my team showed me first of all, I burst into tears and just said, I can’t believe this is happening. How awful can

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (18:27)

people be.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (18:30)

I still get goosebumps because it was just something so unexpected. We hadn’t been looking for it. didn’t know about it.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (18:39)

patterns.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (18:46)

It is mind blowing and so that’s when I met, so we talked to a lot of people with lived experience, we talked to the women’s safety sector, to consumer advocates and also the e-safety commissioner and she said, well why don’t you apply safety by design? And so we mapped a whole lot of interventions that we could have done, 52 possible interventions and the first one was we need to detect these patterns, we need to

 

block the abuse of messages and we started doing that. I took this evidence to all the banks and all the banks in Australia have now moved on this. The majority of them have got blocks in place. More than a million abusive messages have been blocked in real time. Not by stopping the money but masking or sending a message to the person who’s trying to send the abuse to say you’re not allowed to do it anymore.

 

and you have to change the message. A number of them have got artificial intelligence and they’re monitoring the pattern and then they’re writing to the sender, yeah, they’re writing to the people who are sending it and they’re saying, we can see you, you’ve got to stop. And what we know is that more than 90 % of people who get those warning letters stop sending the messages.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (20:08)

Who would have thought a, I mean, we’ve got a heightened alert to high value transactions being the problem. Who thought these nondescript one and two cent transactions could be carrying as much danger?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (20:25)

That’s right. And could you imagine receiving those messages, especially if you had those alerts and it was popping up all the time, like just it’s another form of control and fear and intimidation. ⁓ Some people had written in it, unblock me from Facebook. It was like the last resort. But now the banks are watching and they’re doing something about it. And I think that that’s it’s a really fantastic ⁓ example of.

 

We didn’t see it, we didn’t understand it, but once we started looking at it, everyone was saying, we can’t walk past this, we’ve got to do something about it. So that’s what’s really inspired my work.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (21:05)

I can imagine. mean that’s a, that is such a significant example that most people wouldn’t even think could happen.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (21:15)

Exactly.

 

We also see it on higher value transactions like child support and those sorts of things. It’s just, it’s awful. People can be awful to everybody.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (21:25)

Wow. So you’ve led, and that leads into this question because you’ve led reforms such as this. What actually shifts when an organisation stops saying, you know, how do we respond? And to this point, start actually baking it into preventative processes in their systems in the first places. Are there more examples like that?

 

or examples that haven’t necessarily taken place but should take place.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (22:01)

Yeah, there’s a very long list, I’m also really pleased that lots of people are, you know, I’m pushing on open doors having these conversations, which I think is really exciting. So what I would say is most organisations and most businesses will start with when they think about domestic abuse, they start with how do we support our colleagues who might be experiencing domestic abuse?

 

How do we give them time out when they need it? How do we help them with their safety? So that is absolutely the right place to start. Look after your colleagues. A number of organisations are also saying, ⁓ we also need to think about our colleagues who are using violence and abuse because we know that it is so prevalent in our society and every…

 

every person I talk to, whether it’s in business, in my personal life, in government, in regulators, everyone knows somebody who is impacted by domestic abuse, whether they were a victim or they are a victim, whether they are using violence, whether they grew up in a house or they know children who are also experiencing abuse. So this is something that touches everybody. So in your workplace, you’ve got to think about

 

people who are both experiencing and using.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (23:29)

saying that, I was thinking, actually I don’t, and then I’ve just gone, actually I do. It’s quite a challenge to actually think that through your own personal lens.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (23:36)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Yeah, and you know, you will also know people even if they never disclose to you.

 

because they’re living with it and they’re deeply ashamed whether they are using violence or they are living in that fear. ⁓ So it is just so prevalent in our society and just so many people I talk to, they know someone or as we start talking about financial abuse, they’re realizing, I’ve got a friend or even this is happening to me actually.

 

⁓ I think that’s why this conversation is so important and why I’m just so up for having it all the time. So that’s where most businesses will start. They’ll start with their workplace and that’s absolutely the right place. Then they move to customers. So if you are a B2C business ⁓ and you’re supporting customers, there will also be victim survivors who are saying, this is happening to me, can you help me?

 

And banks are one of those places where people quite often go to first and in fact there’s research that shows women are more likely to talk to their bank about economic abuse than they are to go to a specialist service. It is and why is that? Because I want to set up a safe account so that I can leave. I need to disentangle from the abuser and I need to start again. And if you don’t have money you don’t have choices.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (25:02)

Isn’t that interesting?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (25:18)

I think that that’s a really critical role for banks, but it is also for other organisations as well. then people will think about that from their customer service perspective and they’ll say, what do I need to do if someone tells me they need help? How can I help them? Quite frequently it’s because they can’t pay a debt. What my work is doing and where we’re now seeing this shift is

 

actually are our products and services inadvertently enabling this abuse? And I gave you those examples. So yeah, if you don’t have friction in the system, it will be exploited and it is being exploited. Whoa, we didn’t mean for that to happen. So what do we do about it? So it’s like we have these conversations and these people in business are going, I’ve never seen it like that before. That’s not why I’m here in business.

 

That’s not what we’re here to do. We’re here to serve our customers. So, okay, we can start treating this like a risk management process and start closing those gaps. So I gave you the example about the abuse in payment descriptions. And so that’s been a very comprehensive one. ⁓ And then we also know that, say, I can give you an example from insurance. ⁓ A number of insurers have now

 

in what’s called a conduct of others clause. Now I feel like the world’s biggest feminard, I read terms and conditions all the time right? Join me feminards unite. But it is it’s really important to have look at what’s in the fine print. We’ve just done about 200 or so.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (27:06)

I

 

been working on for long and realised that my car for the last three years has been insured as a diesel when it’s a petrol so sometimes it’s not even the really fine print but…

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (27:17)

It’s so

 

important, it’s really important you need to read it particularly in insurance where you know a claim can turn on where a comma is placed basically. So in insurance there is most insurance products have got a term that’s called ⁓ malicious damage and there’s an exclusion. What that means is if I deliberately smashed up my television

 

I can’t go and claim it and say, thanks, I’d really like a television. In an abusive situation, it might be someone who lives in the house or who’s invited to the house and they may damage property or destroy property as part of a domestic abuse situation.

 

Yeah, and because of the malicious damage exclusion, what we know is that victim survivors are then penalised again because they can’t claim. So they’re getting the abuse, the violence and then the financial penalty, they don’t have the protection that they thought. So a number of insurers have started introducing what’s called a conduct of others clause. And what that means is that

 

If those kinds of situations happen, it could also happen where someone has a mental illness and they are causing property damage as well during an episode, the insurer is now saying, well actually we’re going to take that into account and we might pay out on a claim that otherwise would be denied. So that’s a fantastic

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (28:57)

These are fantastic clothes.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (28:59)

It is. so I would be checking and asking your insurer, do you have a conduct of others?

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (29:06)

You know what

 

I’m doing after this podcast, I’m going to do a deep dive because I’ve got a home insurance policy coming up for renewal. I’m going to do exactly that. And I would challenge anybody listening to this to do the same.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (29:19)

Yeah, you absolutely should. A number have got them, but not everyone has. It was a recommendation of a big parliamentary inquiry a couple of years ago that every insurer should do it. So do ask your insurers about it. It’s really important. Another example, and I know I’m going deep into ⁓ nerd territory, feminine territory.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (29:43)

What other fine print have you read?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (29:45)

So

 

there’s another one. In 2022 when I wrote my first Design to Disrupt paper I made a recommendation that every bank and then subsequently every company should put in their terms financial abuse is a really serious problem. If you misuse our products for financial abuse there will be consequences. It could be that we warn you, it could be that we suspend you, we might close your account.

 

or might even report you to law enforcement.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (30:17)

the do not smoke warning.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (30:19)

Correct. put it out there. Exactly. Yeah. It’s also the same as after September 11. Yes. We know we cannot joke about terrorism and get on a plane. Yep. So this recommendation is not about saying I’m going to close every, we want to close everyone’s account. It’s actually about saying, is the standard we expect. This is what respect looks like. We don’t want to inadvertently enable your abuse. So if you do it,

 

You can’t be part of our organisation. Nowhere had ever done that before in the world. ⁓ And I launched it. No one had done that in this context around financial abuse. By the first, after the first year of advocating for that with the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety, and we partnered on my first paper, 14 banks had moved on that recommendation, which was terrific.

 

And so last, no, gosh, doesn’t time fly. In 2024, I launched a campaign called Respect and Protect, which was to encourage every organisation to do that. There’s now more than 60 companies that have those terms. They range from banks to insurers to energy to water to there’s a fintech startup in their education. There’s health insurance.

 

There’s a lot of different organisations that are embracing this. That is a safety by design measure and it’s really putting perpetrators on notice. This is a standard of behaviour that we don’t accept, we don’t tolerate, we don’t want you to weaponise our products. A bank account, an insurance account is no place for abuse if you do it there’s consequences.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (32:13)

We have a lot to thank you for, Catherine.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (32:16)

Well, I have a lot to thank survivors who have entrusted me with their stories and people who work in the sector who have been doing this for decades for spending time with me and helping me to understand what is going on. think my superpower is that

 

I’m the translator. I’ve been working inside corporates for such a long time that I know this is a policy change, a procedure change, a process. Does it require training? Is it in risk management? I can use all the nerd words and the words inside an organisation that help to translate it into practical action.

 

And I think that’s why, and I also think people genuinely want to help and they don’t know what to do. So here’s a bit of a toolkit, the financial safety by design toolkit I call it.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (33:11)

Well coming up we’re going to talk about the warning signs women often miss, the financial questions women should be able to answer and why more men are stepping forward and asking to help.

 

If you’re loving the Power of Women podcasts, be sure to jump onto our YouTube channel and hit that subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode.

 

Catherine, in recent months you’ve been talking about the fact that men have been reaching out and asking, what can I do to help? What do you think is actually prompting that and is that actually helping the work that you do?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (33:57)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny, I have been doing this work for a number of years and it’s always been with the support and leadership of fabulous men and women ⁓ who are just, who like me, think that this is an issue that we all need to tackle.

 

What I think is really hard is it’s hard sometimes to know where to start. It’s a violence against women and financial abuse is part of that is such a big problem that it can feel really overwhelming. And I have found a number of people have also said to me, I don’t want to get it wrong. What if I do the wrong thing? What if I make it worse for that person? ⁓ And

 

What if I say the wrong thing? First of all, you are going to say the wrong thing probably. want to tell you know, more than 30 years ago, I was a young journalist. That’s how I started my career. Much younger. And ⁓ I met a woman. But I met a woman who meeting her has impacted me profoundly.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (35:11)

Stampiness.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (35:22)

We were the same age, her name’s Anne O’Neill. ⁓ She had suffered a terrible, terrible crime and she’d lost both of her children. She was wounded for life and I was the first journalist to ever speak to her. ⁓ And I asked her a question that is so often on many people’s lips, right? I said, what did you do? Because I couldn’t fathom.

 

that this person could do something. Like, it’s like, you must have provoked him, right? Was going through my head. And she said to me, Catherine, it wasn’t what I did. This was what he did. And I just felt mortified. And she explained to me.

 

with her really quiet and unassuming and very gracious way how domestic abuse works. And it’s never the victim’s fault. And it’s never something that they’ve done. It’s a person making a choice to use violence, intimidation, technology, finance to control another person. And so what I say to people when they ask me,

 

you know, when they say I’m worried about getting it wrong is you may not use the right words, but if you believe somebody when they are telling you this is happening to me, that’s the place to start. And a lot of the men who I talk to are in positions of power. And so they have the ability to set the tone in their organization about gender equality. And they also have the position of power.

 

to lead change, is ⁓ flushing out this issue, having discussions about it, not with blame, but having a really uncomfortable conversation, and it is uncomfortable, but stepping into it and making sure that your workplace is a safe place and making sure your products and services are safe. The more organizations that do that, the better. It’s why last

 

my goodness, it’s beginning of 26. So end of 2024, ⁓ I co-founded with a not-for-profit thriving communities Australia, Australia’s business alliance against domestic and family violence. It’s called One Generation. There’s seven corporates from across different sectors that are all part of it. And our aim is to get to understand what will help victims survivors when they are your customers.

 

so that everyone can do more of that.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (38:08)

So this is a B2B platform. Sorry, a B2C platform.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (38:11)

It is.

 

So it’s basically there are seven corporates drawn from different sectors. They are part of the One Generation Alliance and our aim is to, we’re just working on lived experience research to understand if you have a customer who is experiencing domestic abuse, what is going to serve them the best? What are the things that you need to do? Because we know not everyone’s doing it and they’re not doing it well.

 

There are plenty of organisations that are doing it well, so we’re learning from them and learning directly from customers. What did you need from organisations and how can everyone do that? There are things like, don’t make me tell my story over and over and over again. Yeah, that’s right. ⁓ Don’t ask me for evidence that I don’t have. Not everyone goes to police. Not everyone will get a conviction.

 

but please believe me. So there are very simple things that you can do in training. And so that’s what that alliance is doing. And I think that that’s why when we have practical tips that are really well informed by people with lived experience, by people who are working with them and are practical suggestions, I think that’s why more and more people are coming in and asking, what can I do?

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (39:37)

That is such a powerful example because I mean we all know that the reverse is how systems are set up. You you go for an insurance claim and it starts with an interrogative process and you’re always on the back foot. So just that simple premise of, please believe me, and changing the lens in which the dialogue is framed.

 

changes everything. Now yes, there are people who are looking to scam systems and the like. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people who are coming in in times of need and personal distress.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (40:22)

Yeah and you know I also get asked a lot about well what happens if someone’s trying to rip us off and someone’s lying about this. Well first of all we know that very very few people who are victims of violence lie about it. There is a narrative that there are false reports but that is it’s very very seldom that that happens. In fact the data shows it just doesn’t

 

right? Very frequently. ⁓ Most organisation, if someone is coming to you and saying this is it I’m experiencing this you should believe it because they just need your help and most of the time they’ll come and ask and say can you just give me time to pay or it actually I was coerced into this debt or it I didn’t even know about it so it is one of the reasons I say that financial abuse should be treated in the same way as we treat fraud and scam.

 

because quite frequently that’s what’s happening to a survivor. They’ve got fraudulent debt, you know, if you get a debt, ⁓ if you get a credit card, something happening on your credit card, you didn’t know about it, it’ll be wiped off because that’s fraud and banks are insured against that. If it’s a scam, we’re now seeing much more…

 

response, you know, ⁓ a greater and collective response from business and government actually to respond to this organised crime ⁓ and scams. And we don’t have the same response, unfortunately, to financial abuse, but it is very similar tactics that people are using. And I do believe that we need to see that happen across Australia.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (42:09)

So if we move away from businesses just for a second and start to look at individuals one on one, could you give us a little bit of an overview of what are the early warning signs that somebody might be experiencing financial abuse? Because I’m thinking if we take the educational lens of this isn’t something a listener is experiencing, but what

 

what might they be looking to observe in their broader sphere of day-to-day contacts and community.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (42:49)

Yeah, and I think I find as we talk about financial abuse, the light bulbs go on. What we know from research is most people who are in it don’t recognise it. And that’s why it’s really important we do have these conversations to raise awareness. So financial abuse is where someone is using money or access to money to control another person. What that might look like for someone who’s experiencing it is their choice is being taken away.

 

their knowledge is being taken away. ⁓ So really practical examples and ones that I hear a lot ⁓ is ⁓ you might get paid an allowance, for example. So quite often we know that if someone starts caregiving and they leave the workplace, there’s an agreement and we frame it. We even talk about it as, well, the main breadwinner will give you an allowance. ⁓

 

That can be constricted.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (43:50)

Because

 

it sounds controlling just by nature.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (43:55)

It does, but it’s also a conversation that people have. How are we going to live when we go from two incomes to one income? And so I think a healthy money relationship is saying, what’s my money? What’s your money? What’s our money? We don’t have that when we start ⁓ having conversations. We know young people are starting to talk more about what is consent in a sexual relationship.

 

How do you ask for it? How do you give it? How do you withdraw it? How do you check in? We’re not having the same financial consent conversation. What’s my money? What’s your money? What’s our money? How do we manage it?

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (44:36)

rooted in the talking money is taboo.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (44:40)

I think there’s many reasons, absolutely. you know, it’s part of, in some societies, some cultures, everyone’s very open about money. In some cultures, it’s very clear that this is a man’s role is to manage the money. And a woman’s role is to be the caregiver. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. When it becomes problematic is when you’re not open about it.

 

Two people are not involved in the decision making, even if there is one decision maker, when you’re not transparent and when you’re not clear on how does this work, ⁓ when there is secrecy, where there is deceit and where there is control. And so some of those early warning indicators could look like ⁓ I’m having to ask for money all the time.

 

And I’m feeling guilty about that. being shouted at. I’m being told you can’t spend money on these things. You don’t have that choice. I don’t know what accounts my name is on. I don’t know what debts there are in my name. There are much more. There are. You’ve spent money on that. ⁓ Now there is violence that’s related to that. And so actually that control that is

 

controlling you about how you’re going to spend money by ⁓ through ⁓ abuse or violence. So it’s all very much interrelated and obviously that’s a really serious example but I’ve you know.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (46:15)

And it’s not defined to any socioeconomic group, is it? Because this can be happening in the poorest of households and in the most financially sound of households.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (46:28)

Absolutely, and I hear it from mainly women, but women from every walk of life. ⁓ I think sometimes it can feel even more challenging for a victim survivor who is in a high-powered professional career living in the dream house where

 

actually behind closed doors, they’ve got no control over their money. They are acquiescing to every single whim ⁓ because they are walking on eggshells. And those women have described how it’s much harder for anyone to believe them because surely, that’s right. ⁓

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (47:13)

that couldn’t be happening.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (47:16)

But also people who are experiencing financial abuse are some of your best budgeters that you will ever find because they will make every cent count and every dollar account. So I think what I would say is you need to trust your gut. If this doesn’t feel right, if I don’t feel like I know or I’ve got choice in

 

what’s happening with the money and sometimes those choices are going to be really hard. Then that is an early warning sign. It’s a little bit like we, you might have heard the expression love bombing and coercive control. So financial abuse is a tactic of coercive control and coercive control is the pattern of behaviour that someone uses to control someone to make them do what they say.

 

⁓ It’s being outlawed all around Australia. Different governments are bringing in these laws and that’s because it is so corrosive and we know that unfortunately where there is coercive control it is a lead indicator of homicide.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (48:26)

And that point is a red flag. Different governments are bringing it in. Why can we not be Australia and bring in a blanket ruling?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (48:38)

Yeah, thank you Federation. Yeah.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (48:40)

Federation is a little more problematic than train gauges not lining up between Sydney and Melbourne, isn’t it?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (48:42)

You

 

Yeah, look, even in my Design to Disrupt paper that I looked at energy and water last year, because the laws are inconsistent across the country, it means that if a survivor flees from one state where an energy provider can get access to grants related to domestic abuse to help pay the energy bills, that’s not the same in other states.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (49:18)

And I appreciate all our listeners aren’t from Australia, but ⁓ just think of Australia as a whole bunch of different countries and that’ll kind of resonate because that’s the dynamic at play. Tell me, if I was to ask you, if you said to the average married couple whose name’s on the mortgage, how often would the female’s name be on the mortgage?

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (49:47)

I think these days most often that will be. quite housing is so expensive that quite often it takes two incomes to be able to purchase a house. What I would say and I’m going to get into feminine terms and conditions again. Exactly. It’s like we need a little ding. Let’s talk about that.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (50:07)

Yep

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (50:15)

So most mortgages are set up and it’s called joint and several liability. That’s the expression and the term that is in the contract. And so most mortgages are joint mortgages, joint facilities. What joint and several liability means is that you are both on the hook for 100 % of that loan. It’s not 50-50.

 

So it helps you buy the home, but it also means that if one person doesn’t pay, you are on the hook for 100%. And it’s not just mortgages, it is also a range of other debts as well. So it could be an energy account. We also know that it can be tax liabilities when you are a director of a company, for example.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (51:09)

So purely set up to protect the organisation with no consideration of the circumstances individuals might find themselves in.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (51:17)

Look, and I understand why. mean, obviously, I a mortgage.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (51:20)

It makes…

 

It’s problematic.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (51:25)

Yes, so there are ways that you can protect yourself against that. I would say if you take a look at your mortgages that joint and severally liable, you could potentially if you’re going for a new mortgage or a new home loan, you could ask for what other structures, what other ways could we structure this? And there are a number of different ways you can do that. There are there’s one called tenants in common, means which is quite often a business.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (51:53)

Kind of

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (51:55)

Yeah, that’s right. And that one offers a different way of structuring it. So you could say, well, this person’s on the hook for 70 % and this person for 30%. You need to think about all of these. And I would encourage people to look at the options. Then also, if you have got that, a lot of people will have offset accounts. So they’re trying to reduce the amount of interest. And we know with the current climate that ⁓

 

where interest rates are fluctuating, that it’s a really good idea to try and pop some money into an offset account to try and reduce the interest. A number of banks are now introducing separate offset accounts and multiple offset accounts. So what I’ve seen in my work is that at the point of separation or before, ⁓ which is where financial abuse can start or get worse because it can happen.

 

for a long time after the relationship has ended, those joint accounts, like offset accounts or redraws, can be cleaned out. And you might have been putting all this money into that joint offset account and then all of a sudden that’s all gone. you’re left with 100 % of your home loan to pay. So a number of banks now have multiple offsets. So you could have one in your name and one in your partner’s name. And that money,

 

is yours and it’s both going to reduce their interest and so if it’s healthy all hunky dory but if the worst happen

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (53:29)

You’ve got the safety valve. That’s a terrific idea. Such simple strategies. I guess it comes down to, Catherine, everything’s great while it’s great. This is the, know, how many marriages end up in divorce scenarios. And everything’s often good until you start talking about money. having

 

these types of structures, even when everything is terrific, is a great forward thinking strategy of responsibility to each other.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (54:08)

Yeah, and financial independence because money gives you choices. And ⁓ if you’re having a conversation about what’s mine, what’s yours, what’s ours, how are we going to do this together? That’s fantastic. And you’re right. No one goes into a relationship where it’s abusive straight away, right? It happens over time. so ⁓ my view is that you need to just ask some simple questions. I’m launching a

 

podcast to give people some practical financial safety tips, which is really exciting. And it’s because we, you know, even when you’re setting up your apps on your phone and your technology, a lot of us, if you’re like me and a Gen X, this is all still new. Are these apps tracking me? Can you track me? ⁓

 

Can I just switch that off? Do I need that tracking system on, for example? Can someone else see ⁓ into my account? Do they need to? Can I switch it off? There’s a whole lot of different safety ⁓ protections that maybe we don’t know about. And they don’t have to be part of a scary conversation about, what happens if this relationship separates or if there’s abuse in it? It’s actually just, my view is financial safety. ⁓

 

is and tech safety are as important as financial and digital literacy. In fact, it’s the new form of literacy.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (55:36)

Absolutely. And you just pointed out you’re a Gen X and I’m on the cusp and I actually fall into the baby boomers. So for all of the baby boomers listening, this is about being ahead of the game and about being aware. So it’s invaluable. So Catherine, what else is in the pipeline for you for 2026 in terms of this incredible work that you are doing to… ⁓

 

put in some safeguards both into organisations and awareness for individuals around many of these issues that we’ve touched on today.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (56:13)

Well a couple of things, we’re launching the Design to Disrupt podcast.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (56:18)

Which

 

will be… Yes.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (56:21)

Yep,

 

and that is really practical financial safety tips. Here’s how you can set up your bank accounts, your telephone accounts, energy accounts, water accounts, your ⁓ technology accounts to be safe and to protect both you and your money. ⁓ This year we’ve launched the Financial Safety Alliance which is a partnership between Flequity and ⁓

 

a number of finance sector industry associations and we’re helping to build some resources around safer design that can be consistently applied across ⁓ banks and lenders, whether they’re buy now pay later products for example or banking products and also with the credit bureaus as well. So we’ll be working on that and I’m intending to continue to speak

 

to anyone and everyone who will listen about what is financial abuse, what is safety by design and financial safety by design because I believe that we all have a role to play. And so I’m really grateful to you, Di, for asking me to explain what is financial abuse and what can you do about it as an individual but also from an organisational perspective.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (57:44)

I’m eternally grateful to you for the work that you have done to date and for the work that you continue to do because I typically wrap up a podcast and say, can we find you? Well, FLEQUITY Ventures, and we’re going to put that link into the show notes because that will then take somebody to your podcast once it’s live too. Will that be the case? They’ll find that.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (58:09)

Yes it will. Yes it will. And the other thing I would say is that if you want to be a feminard like me, I’m

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (58:17)

You’re going to need magnifying glasses because there’s a lot of small print.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (58:22)

There is but what I have done is on the respect and protect website you can go to the page that says the fine print and you can take a look and see if any of the organizations you do business with are listed there. We’ve listed the financial abuse terms so you can read them and see them.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (58:43)

Be one of your podcast episodes, The Fine Print.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (58:47)

The fine pig, great idea. Thank you.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (58:49)

That’s a perfect one because that’s where so many are tripped up. We’re caught out by the fine print. that’s my marketing tip today.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (59:01)

Awesome. I was also wondering how many people would wear a cap or a t-shirt saying feminine ⁓ Maybe not as many I don’t mind self-identifying

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (59:11)

Yeah, I think that’s harder to sell just quietly, but you know, it depends. Maybe there’s a generation coming through the Gen A’s probably think that’s absolutely cool, but I don’t know that they want to identify as any badgers, so maybe not, I don’t know. But seriously, for our listeners, this is the type of episode that I would really implore that you do share, because this is

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (59:17)

Ha

 

That’s very true. That’s very true.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (59:40)

This is great for parents to share with their children, for you to share with your friends, friendship network, or if you feel somebody… ⁓

 

is in a situation where something just doesn’t count. might be an easy way to actually approach a conversation that’s more difficult and say, listened to this, you might take something from it, this is what I took from it. So I would really encourage somebody to think through that lens. The podcast is available on all of the podcast platforms, both audible and on YouTube, so easily shared.

 

very much look forward to your podcast going live as well, Catherine, because the informative nature of that is the core fundamentals that we really all need to hear and help us put in all of the systems into place. Personally, I have to declare I live in a household where my husband said to me 20 years or 21 years ago when we got married, you’re captain of the ship. And I’ve taken that literally and I have taken control.

 

but I personally don’t make any financial moves without full disclosure so that we are both informed on the decisions even though I might be taking the action.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (1:01:06)

which is absolutely a healthy money relationship. Go you Di

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (1:01:11)

Thank

 

you, thank you. But I do like being the captain of the ship.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (1:01:15)

Yeah.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (1:01:18)

Just quietly.

 

CATHERINE FITZPATRICK [GUEST] (1:01:20)

Sounds like he likes it too, so that’s pretty cool.

 

DI GILLETT [HOST] (1:01:25)

Let’s leave it that way. Catherine, thank you for your time and fabulous for the listeners. Thank you for joining us. Until next time.