In May 2018 Congress gave banks, credit unions, brokers, investment advisers and insurers something they had been asking for: immunity from civil and administrative liability when an employee reports a suspected case of financial exploitation of someone 65 or older. The immunity is conditional. The employee has to have been trained, the report has to be made in good faith and with reasonable care, and it has to go to a covered agency, meaning a financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, law enforcement, or a state or local adult protective services agency. A report to a third party carries no protection at all.
Seven years on, the reports are being filed. Between June 2022 and June 2023 financial institutions submitted 155,415 filings flagged for elder financial exploitation, covering roughly 27 billion dollars of suspicious activity, about 80 percent of it scams by an outsider and 20 percent theft by someone the victim knew. What happens next is less clear: an earlier review of 180,000 such filings found only 28 percent said the institution had also notified adult protective services, law enforcement or any other authority.
What the Law Gave the Bank
The training condition is the part customers never see and the part that makes the rest work. An institution that wants the immunity has to train the people who supervise, work in compliance or legal roles, or deal with older customers directly, covering how to spot exploitation, how to report it internally and when to report it outward, the common warning signs, and how to protect customer privacy while doing it. Current staff were to be trained as soon as reasonably practicable; anyone joining a covered role afterwards within a year. The institution keeps records and hands them over on request.
None of that obliges anyone to report anything. The statute removes a risk; it does not create a duty. The federal consumer bureau's position is that institutions should report suspected exploitation to the appropriate authorities, which is a recommendation, not a requirement.
The Mechanics of a Hold That Buys Time
The sharper tool sits in the brokerage rules. Since 2018, and strengthened in March 2022, a broker who reasonably believes a specified adult is being financially exploited may place a temporary hold on a disbursement or, since that amendment, on a securities transaction.
The clock runs in stages. The initial hold lasts up to 15 business days. If the firm's internal review supports the belief, it may extend by 10 more. And if the firm has reported the matter to a state regulator, agency or court, it may add another 30, for a maximum of 55 business days. A specified adult means someone 65 or older, or anyone 18 or older whom the firm reasonably believes has an impairment leaving them unable to protect their own interests.
The hold is where the trusted contact becomes operative. The firm must notify the customer's designated trusted contact within two business days of placing one. That person has no authority to move money or trade; the designation exists so there is somebody to call who is not the person instructing the transfer.
A proposal now before the SEC would stretch the maximum hold from 55 business days to 145, through three further 30-day extensions, and add a rule allowing a 10-business-day delay on suspected fraud for any customer over 18. It would also let the trusted contact be labelled an emergency contact and applied across all of a customer's accounts at once.
What the Numbers Look Like
The reported scale keeps rising. The FBI's complaint center recorded 201,266 complaints from victims aged 60 and over in 2025, with 7.748 billion dollars in losses, against 20.877 billion across all ages. The Federal Trade Commission's report to Congress, covering 2024, counted 421,031 fraud reports from people 60 and over, 109,580 of them involving a loss, for nearly 2.4 billion dollars, up from about 1.9 billion a year earlier.
The shape of that growth matters more than the total. Reports of losses above 100,000 dollars rose 351 percent over five years to 5,125; they are 5 percent of the loss reports and 68 percent of the money. The median loss for someone in their sixties was 900 dollars. For someone over 80 it was 1,650, and where somebody else filed the report, which happens for 16 percent of reports in that age group, the median was 6,000.
What a Customer Can Set Up in Advance
The protections that work are the ones already on the account before anything happens, because a hold placed by a firm with nobody to call is a delay without a resolution. Two steps cover most of it. Add a trusted contact to every brokerage account, understanding that the person gets no authority over the money and exists only to be reached. And ask whether the institution reports suspected exploitation to adult protective services as well as filing internally, since the evidence says most do not.
— John Stone