We Need a “Moonshot” to Combat Elder Financial Abuse

I recently retired after spending over a decade and a half concentrating on the challenges of elder financial abuse. While there have been a number of good developments during that time, including state law changes and regulatory initiatives, the problem nonetheless has grown as the number of older Americans needing protection has grown as well. I think the effort to fight elder financial exploitation is missing a key element—a national, coordinated commitment to fully understand the full parameters of the issue and then a total, “all-hands-on-deck” effort to make a measurable change in the incidents of abuse, the number of victims, and dollars lost. We need a “moonshot.”

When you hear folks speak of a moonshot, they are referring to the moment 60 years ago when President Kennedy spoke before 35,000 people at Rice University and committed the entire country to placing a human on the moon before the decade of the 1960s ended. That effort called upon virtually every state and every industry in the country to all come together in a unified effort to carry out that mission. While there are many lessons we can take away from that historic effort, I will focus on three to show how those lessons could apply to an analogous effort to combat elder financial exploitation.

The first lesson is that the moonshot scientists on whom Kennedy had the country rely had sufficient data on which to base their calculations of how to get to the moon. Starting even in the Eisenhower administration, U.S. scientists had been gathering critical data to determine key information such as the potential radiation astronauts would face, the gravitational pull of the moon, and estimates on the power needed to leave earth orbit for the transit to the moon. By contrast, in elder exploitation, our data are a hodgepodge of best guesses. Just on the issue of how much money is lost annually to elder financial abuse, we have seen estimates range from $440 million to $2.9 billion to $36 billion. Imagine, if you will, that the moonshot scientists were trying to get to the moon with estimates of the distance ranging from 44,000 miles to 290,000 miles to 3.6 million miles. It is without question that we cannot attack a problem if we do not have data that describe the nature of the problem.

The second lesson is that the moonshot brought countless numbers of American industries together all focused on the overall mission of sending a person to the moon. For example, some of the strongest aviation companies, which often are fierce competitors, collaborated across a number of key engineering elements to help the Apollo mission succeed. Among the prime contractors were companies such as Boeing, Douglas Aircraft, and Grumman Corporation, which all put aside their day-to-day airline production competitions to help America to the moon.

By contrast, in the fight against elder financial abuse, coordination is often lacking. Although one private securities brokerage regulator has come up with a nationwide initiative to fight elder abuse, there is virtually no effective federal regulation. A number of states have come up with approaches to combating abuse, but the approaches often vary, with some states covering banks and brokerage firms while others cover only one, or none, of these financial institutions. Even in the field of financial technology, where a growing number of firms are advancing innovative concepts that could aid in the fight against elder financial exploitation, there is a missing element. Many of the innovators often focus on their product as the sole solution, rarely stopping to consider whether, in collaboration with other existing products or new innovations, they could create a comprehensive approach to the elder financial abuse problem. It would be as if an innovator in the 1960s focused solely on his or her own creation for boots for the moonwalk. The mission was not to send boots to the moon but to work with others to create a suit, visor, helmet, and other items, as well as boots, that would allow Americans to successfully explore the moon’s surface. Similarly, we need a complete, multifaceted solution to combat the exploitation targeting older Americans.

Finally, the third lesson we should take from the moonshot is to engage in current, consistent, and convincing messaging. Richard Jurek, coauthor of Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program, indicates that the public relations work of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) made the moon landing “the first positive viral event that captured the world’s attention.” The country was fully aware of the lunar effort, and the public relations work of NASA resulted in estimates of a half billion people around the world watching that first moon landing. In contrast, the messaging in the elder financial abuse fight is often disjointed and episodic. For over the past dozen years or so, many recognize June 15 as World Elder Abuse Awareness Day. While that is helpful, it seems important that there should be messaging and collaboration throughout the year instead of on a single day. Government-sponsored public service announcements, social media engagement, coordinated messaging by financial firms, educational awareness, and other efforts can all serve to raise the public’s consciousness about the enormity of the problem and engage the public in supporting effective solutions. For example, in 2018, California’s Department of Social Services conducted a competition for high school and college students, respectively, to create posters or other media concerning elder and dependent adult abuse. A moonshot could encompass such an effort, and more, nationwide.

While it often recognizes elder financial exploitation as a growing challenge, American society has in no way made the commitment to battle the elements that make for this problem on multiple fronts. By establishing a moonshot philosophy, society will make a bold statement that it intends to tackle this assault on the financial well-being of older Americans across a myriad of fronts and with an intensity not exhibited to date. It is just such a broad engagement that likely will help drive meaningful and lasting solutions to our elder financial abuse problem.