When government money comes pouring into the private sector, businesses of dubious character tend to spring up quickly.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) may be one of the biggest facilitators of this at the moment.

As of mid-December, there were 269,432 active NDIS providers across Australia, the vast majority of which (around 94%) are what’s known as unregistered providers. It means they haven’t been audited and approved by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NDIS Commission) – one of the main regulators – to make sure they’re delivering quality services and sticking to the rules.

Though there are limits on the types of support they can provide, these businesses have comparatively low start-up costs and can enter the market quickly. In some parts of Australia, unregistered NDIS providers seem to be everywhere, and many are exploiting the sprawling system. Between 2018 and 2024, the number of NDIS participants grew by 452%.

The NDIS currently serves around 761,000 adults and children, and it cost around $49 billion in taxpayer dollars in 2025. Those costs have been predicted by some analysts to rise to $100 billion a year by 2035, overtaking the age pension to become Australia’s most expensive social support program.

The NDIS has been an indispensable life-changer for many, but the scheme remains a work in progress, and it has fallen short of expectations on a number of fronts, especially when it comes to meeting the needs of marginalised groups such as First Nations people and those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

A recurring complaint from participants overall is that the NDIS administrative processes are complicated and confusing. The bureaucratic hurdles are many.

It’s also important to point out that nearly half of NDIS providers suffered a financial loss in 2024–25 according to National Disability Services, the peak industry body for non-government disability service organisations.

But there’s a larger overarching issue – that many NDIS providers are more focused on reaping profits from the government-subsidised scheme than on helping people with a disability. This unfortunate fact is contributing heavily to the cost blowouts.

The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) and the NDIS Commission have prime responsibility for regulating the scheme. (The NDIS Commission received 29,054 complaints about providers in 2023–24.)

But NDIS providers are also beholden to the Australian Consumer Law, which is overseen by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

The dodgy provider problem is big enough that these three regulators set up a task force in December 2023 to deal with it. In February this year, the ACCC released a report outlining some of the enforcement actions it has taken since then. The transgressions it highlights are standard fare in the broader consumer marketplace – false advertising, overcharging, contracts lopsided in favour of the business, illegal restrictions on returns, and so on.

But when people with a disability are the victims, it gets more concerning.  

Ausnew’s dodgy sales tactics and misleading claims

Shortly after the task force was set up, an NDIS provider called Ausnew Home Care Service came under scrutiny for engaging in tactics reminiscent of the big supermarkets and unscrupulous online retailers. (Ausnew, a registered provider, sells everything from therapeutic pillows to mobility scooters.)

In December 2024 the ACCC took the business to court for allegedly promoting “sales” prices by displaying earlier strikethrough prices complete with “last chance” sales banners and countdown clocks. In fact, the “sales” prices were just the regular prices that were always available, and the strikethrough prices never existed. The ACCC is currently undertaking legal action against both Woolworths and Coles for similar conduct.

Then ACCC Commissioner Liza Carver said that the “artificial urgency” would have misled consumers, “many of whom were elderly or with a disability requiring support”.

Ausnew Home Care Service was also called out for claiming its products were “NDIS approved” on its website and in Google ads, a marketing boast that seems particularly irresistible to certain providers. The problem is that there is no such thing as an NDIS-approved product. The NDIS Commission registers providers, but it doesn’t endorse or approve of particular products.

The way this plays out for NDIS recipients is that they may end up purchasing something – a massage chair for instance – that says or implies it’s NDIS-approved. Then their NDIS claim for reimbursement is rejected because it’s not an eligible support item.

To round out its contraventions of consumer law, Ausnew also made up its own rules about consumer guarantees. Its refund policy imposed various conditions and exclusions on refunds or replacements for faulty goods, including that they had to be returned within seven days of purchase in their original packaging, and that it was up to Ausnew whether to provide a store credit or replacement. According to the law, consumers can demand a repair, replacement or refund in the case of a major fault, with no conditions attached. The Ausnew case is ongoing.

In all of the above, Ausnew is not alone. But the business did manage to tick several non-compliance boxes at once.

False claims of NDIS affiliation

A business claiming a connection with the NDIS when there is none is perhaps the most common form of consumer deception arising from the scheme. Early last year, the retail chain Bedshed paid $39,600 in penalties after the ACCC issued it with two infringement notices for claiming that some of its mattresses, furniture and bedding accessories were “NDIS approved” and “NDIS permitted”.

“Targeting consumers experiencing vulnerability or disadvantage with misleading advertising is particularly concerning, and we are continuing to investigate companies making similar claims,” ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said at the time.

Around the same time, Thermomix Australia paid $79,200 in ACCC penalties for claiming its Thermomix TM6 mix and Kobold cordless vacuum and mop were connected with the NDIS.

The misleading promotional language ran the gamut: “NDIS approved”, “NDIS-registered product”, “NDIS-consumables”, “NDIS assistive technology”, and “NDIS equipment”.

“Each NDIS participant has unique needs, and what’s funded under their plan is determined individually, not through a list of approved products. There are no categories of goods or services which are automatically NDIS approved or funded for all NDIS participants,” Cass-Gottlieb said.

The NDIS Commission was recently given new powers to combat fraud, most notably an enforcement tool called Anti-Promotion Orders, which can be imposed on providers who misleadingly promote products as “NDIS approved”.

When the ACCC report was released in February this year, ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe sounded a warning to businesses set on putting profits ahead of the needs of people with a disability.

“Harm can range from financial loss and life-limiting impacts, to compromising the safety and physical wellbeing of NDIS participants. Such conduct is completely unacceptable and the ACCC will continue to work with taskforce agencies to protect NDIS participants, educate and hold providers that continue to do the wrong thing accountable.”

How to spot false NDIS advertising

• If it says “NDIS approved” it’s misleading by definition – the NDIS doesn’t approve particular goods or services.
• Don’t trust ads that say NDIS funds will cover “all inclusive” holidays. NDIS funding doesn’t cover costs for participants on holidays. 
• Ads that provide instructions on how to use NDIS funding codes for recreational outings like the movies or theme parks are misleading – the scheme doesn’t cover this.
• Don’t trust businesses that suggest an NDIS affiliation or endorsement in their name, such as “NDIS therapies” and the like.

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The Banking Code of Practice confers a duty on banks to be on the lookout for signs of financial elder abuse, which is a major problem in Australia. Most of the perpetrators are the grown children of the victims.

When a child of an elderly person asks them to act as guarantor for a loan and legal advice is not obtained, for instance, the code requires that the guarantee document is signed by the parent without the child present. The guarantor is also asked to consider what they’re getting into for three days before the agreement is finalised.

The Australian Banking Association (ABA) – the peak industry body representing banks – writes and publishes the code and has also instructed its members that they have a critical role to play in preventing financial abuse through power of attorney arrangements, where children take control of their parent’s financial assets. These legal instruments are all too easily weaponised against the parents who sign off on them.

But the problem with the Banking Code of Practice is that it’s strictly voluntary. The ABA encourages members – which includes all major banks and most smaller ones – to follow it. But there is no real punishment for those that don’t.

Elder financial abuse costing billions

Financial elder abuse can range from using a parent’s credit card for personal expenses to taking control of their home through psychological coercion, with many other examples in between.

The most common form is when the perpetrator (usually the victim’s child) pressures the older person into loaning them or giving them money or into signing over a home or other significant asset.

Another form of financial abuse might be when an adult child doesn’t honour an agreement to contribute to rent, food or aged care expenses.

According to a 2021 study conducted by the federal government’s Australian Institute of Family Studies, men and women over 65 experience financial abuse in roughly equal measure. It affects about 2% of this age group. The study found that this translated to between 67,500 and 100,100 senior Australians having experienced some form of financial abuse in the six months prior to the reporting period.

A large-scale 2024 Parliamentary inquiry into financial elder abuse found that banks should be on the forefront of preventing it. Its final report estimated that the social and financial costs run to several billion dollars every year.

And financial elder abuse is a growing problem. The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics numbers indicate there were 4.4 million Australians aged 65 or older as of 2022, a number that’s expected to more than double by mid-century.

In June 2024, Australia’s Age Discrimination Commissioner, Robert Fitzgerald, warned that lawmakers should take a fresh look at power of attorney arrangements.

“With the largest intergenerational wealth transfer in Australia expected to take place in the coming decades, urgent reform to enduring power of attorney laws is needed to prevent the financial abuse of older persons and make it easier for people to be educated about their rights and responsibilities under these documents,” Fitzgerald said.

Poor code compliance

The Banking Code of Practice may be voluntary, but once a bank signs up to it, they’re technically – but not legally – obligated to comply. The lack of legal enforcement is a critical factor. In February this year, the body tasked with making sure banks follow the code – the Banking Code Compliance Committee (BCCC) – reported that only 23 of 88 banks it reviewed have adequate information about financial elder abuse online or a dedicated webpage.

“Financial elder abuse frequently occurs out of sight, and many cases go unreported because people may feel ashamed, fearful, or may not even realise it is happening,” says BCCC chair Ian Govey.

“Clear, accessible information on the issue matters. It can help customers, carers, and the wider community understand risks, recognise concerns, and know where to seek help.”

The Customer Owned Banking Code Compliance Committee (COBCCC) also took part in the review, since its code of practice also calls for banks to be vigilant for signs of abuse.

Chair Danielle Press says financial elder abuse “is complex, and older Australians deserve meaningful protections that uphold their dignity and rights”. She also called for information and guidance to be “supported by robust internal systems, staff training, and procedures that enable banks to actively identify, prevent and respond to abuse”.

No banks named and shamed

But neither committee recommended banks be held accountable following the report. Instead, they “encouraged all banks to reflect on their current practices and consider ways to strengthen the protection and support they offer to older customers experiencing vulnerability”.

The BCCC doesn’t have the power to issue fines, but will call banks out publicly for serious breaches of the code and issue formal warnings.  Such ‘sanctions’, however, probably go unnoticed by most bank customers, unless they’re in the habit of reading BCCC announcements.

In July 2024, for instance, the BCCC sanctioned ANZ Bank for continuing to charge fees to people who had died, and for being aware of the issue but not taking action to stop it for a year.

In January 2025, it named and shamed Bank of Queensland for also overlooking the fact that the accounts they were charging fees to belonged to people who were no longer alive.

The 65 banks that lacked adequate information and guidance on how to spot and deal with financial elder abuse were not named in the BCCC report.

Abuse enabled by online banking

National Seniors Australia CEO Chris Grice tells ����Vlog that the transition to digital banking has made financial elder abuse easier to perpetrate.

“As the institutions where financial elder abuse can happen within their doors, banks do have a responsibility to help prevent elder abuse, though this doesn’t fall on their shoulders entirely,” Grice says.

“Financial elder abuse can also happen within people’s own homes and residential aged care settings, for example. This is one of the concerns with the loss of face-to-face banking services due to branch closures or the transition to ‘tellerless branches’ with only concierges to direct customers to ATMs.”

“Bank tellers are trained – and do an excellent job under challenging circumstances – to recognise signs of financial elder abuse, such as coerced signatures on loans. These signs are hard to identify online.”

CEO of the advocacy organisation Council on the Ageing Patricia Sparrow says “financial abuse is one of the most common and damaging forms that elder abuse can take. And while not limited to older people, we know it affects millions of Australians and costs the economy $11 billion a year. That scale alone is enough to drive stronger preventative action”.

“Banks and financial institutions have a clear responsibility to help stop this harm before it happens by identifying suspicious activity, responding to unauthorised transactions, strengthening account security and ensuring safe and independent access for older people to manage their money,” Sparrow says.

The personal and familial nature of financial elder abuse – the third most common form behind psychological abuse and neglect – makes it a particularly hurtful crime, says Chris Grice.

“As opposed to scams that are committed by strangers, financial abuse often involves a person in a position of trust coercing or forcing an older person to sign over assets or to change a will or power of attorney, stealing money or taking credit cards,” Grice says.

“Older people fall victim because they don’t expect a loved one to take advantage of them, can’t stop it, or are too embarrassed to seek help. It’s incredibly sad and financial loss in later life is particularly devastating.”

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Like many older Australians who buy into a retirement village, Frank and his wife Stella are discovering that getting out can mean taking a huge financial hit. In fact they may not be able to afford to leave.��

In 2015, they handed over $326,000 to live in a unit at a village in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast region. Now that they’ve “settled down to a life of medical appointments”, as Frank puts it, the couple have been wondering how long they’ll be able to stay there. At some point, an aged care facility may become necessary.��

The steep entry fee was really just an interest-free loan to the village operator rather than a purchase price, which is how the system works. The couple have also been paying monthly fees, similar to mortgage or rental payments. They’ll get some of the $326,000 back, but not nearly as much as they thought.��

“We’ve been told if we ever move out we’ll lose $87,000 in exit fees,” Frank tells ����Vlog.��

He and his wife will also have to come up with the money to return the villa to its original condition, “throwing out window shutters, ceiling fans, even lifting floor tiles and restoring carpeted floors,” Frank says.��

If this was somewhere in his contract, Frank must have missed it.��

Along with the punishing exit costs, the practice of making residents refurbish before they leave is not limited to Queensland. Our earlier reporting on this issue cited cases of operators in Western Australia demanding that residents gut well-appointed units at their own expense, even though they had paid good money over the years to improve them.��

Such are the stark realities of the retirement village market in Australia. We’ve heard from a number of consumers in recent years who have come to learn that paying your way into one is more of a lifestyle choice than a well-considered financial move. But many residents don’t discover just how financially damaging a retirement village can be until they try to leave.��

In recent years a range of advocacy groups – including the Consumer Action Law Centre, National Seniors Australia and Council on the Ageing  – have called for an overhaul of the retirement village model. But that has yet to happen, and village operators continue to wield disproportionate power.

Surrendering your nest egg 

Like Frank, many residents sell their homes to afford the high up-front costs of entering a retirement village. The nest egg you’re required to surrender is generally called an ingoing loan or contribution, and it’s the way it works in retirement villages across Australia.��

In practice, it means you hand a small fortune over to the village operator and they decide how much you get back if you decide to leave. The formulas in the contracts that determine this figure are rarely understood by residents.��

When you leave you’ll likely have to pay a ‘deferred management fee’ as well as other fees until the unit is sold to a new resident. With the fees coming in, operators are often in no hurry to find one.��

Unfair fees and confusing contracts

In the view of one long-time advocate of retirement village residents’ rights in Victoria, Charles Adams, these financial arrangements have long benefited village operators at the expense of residents.��

In 2002, Adams and his wife paid $400,000 to live in a unit in a village run by one of Australia’s biggest operators. It wasn’t a bad lifestyle choice, but in the ensuing years Adams has come to realise that the deal was always lopsided in the village operator’s favour.��

He has spent the past several years trying to raise awareness of this with both residents and advocacy groups, but the complexities at hand have made it difficult to gain traction.��

“It has taken me far too long to understand my contract,” Adams admits. “I thought I’d be able to get some of the people in the village to understand the unfairness of it. But they only say, ‘well, we’re happy here. Go away you silly old bugger’. But I understand that.”  

Adams’ deferred management fee, which is based on how many years he and his wife have lived in the village to date, currently sits at 27% of their ingoing contribution, or $108,000.��

Then there’s a five percent charge payable upon exit for the village’s ‘capital management fund’ – another $20,000.��

That’s just an estimate of how much the village operator would take from their exit entitlement if they moved out this year. It’s likely not the full extent of the exit fees they would face.

More expensive than owning or renting 

In a recent presentation to the Victoria-based non-profit Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG), Adams reiterated a point he’s been making for years: that the ingoing loan model means you’re buying what amounts to a lease .��

With monthly costs and exit fees factored in, Adams maintains that residents will likely end up paying a lot more for a retirement village unit over the long run than they would for a strata unit or even a normal residential lease.��

His projections have led him to a simple observation: housing developments designated as retirement villages can easily end up costing more than other options. It’s a view backed up by recent reporting on this issue by the ABC, which included  a CoreLogic analysis indicating that departing residents are significantly worse off financially than they would have been if they’d bought a non-retirement village property.��

“Why must retirees pay so much more because the housing group is called a retirement village by the operator?,” Adams asks.��

The Victorian Retirement Villages Act refers to the ingoing loan as a ‘donation’. Adams believes the property development lobby had undue influence over shaping this financial model, a point made by advocates in other states. For residents, the legislation lays the groundwork for a trap waiting to spring shut, Adams says.��

“With few exceptions, village residents don’t discover they have been taken advantage of until after contract termination and settlement.”

Australia-wide reforms of recent years 

Retirement village residents around the country have long borne the brunt of various financial inequities, and state-by-state reforms of recent years have helped mitigate some of them.��

In 2019 we reported on reforms in NSW that threw some much-needed light on the area of ongoing fees and exit costs.��

They required village operators to hold regular meetings with residents to explain what their contracts actually say, focusing especially on how much of their ingoing contribution they could expect to get back and how long they’d have to keep paying fees after they moved out.

The NSW reforms also required village operators to give incoming residents an estimated breakdown of what their ongoing costs would be and how much of their ingoing loan they would recover if they left after certain time periods.��

The new disclosure rules put a fine point on the issue of exit costs. In one contract we reviewed following the reforms, a prospective NSW village resident stood to lose $120,000 of her $515,000 ingoing loan if she left the village any time after 90 days.

Making village operators pay what they owe

Other state reforms of recent years have targeted historically long delays in residents receiving what’s left of their ingoing loan, known as an exit entitlement. In Victoria, for instance, village operators now have to refund up to 85% of the estimated refundable portion of an ingoing loan before the unit goes to a new resident to help pay for aged care.��

In South Australia, operators have to pay for a departing resident’s aged care facility and then they can extract that expense from the exit entitlement once it’s paid.��

In 2022, Western Australia passed reforms that required village operators to pay back exit entitlements within 12 months, and to cover aged care costs for departing residents, if necessary, during the waiting period. (Costs would be deducted from the exit entitlement.) 

Prior to this change, it could take three or four years for former WA residents to receive what they were owed.

Trapping retires in ‘terrible conditions’ 

The Housing for the Aged Action Group (HAAG) operates a retirement housing advice service in Victoria, and retirement village residents regularly raise the issue of unexpectedly high exit costs, says executive officer Fiona York.��

“Both the obvious and the hidden costs of retirement village residencies, including deferred management fees, are a huge concern for our members and clients,” says York.��

“Apart from the financial impact, a system where the cost of housing is paid when a resident leaves can create incentives for operators both to end residencies prematurely and artificially extend them.” 

HAAG has documented cases of village operators both pressuring residents to leave so they can collect exit fees and delaying the sale of a unit so they can continue collecting maintenance charges.

York calls the ingoing loan model a financial arrangement “that massively exceeds the actual costs of living in the village and traps older people in really terrible conditions”.��

“We regularly see villages that are badly managed, poorly maintained, or where managers routinely bully and harass residents. But the residents can’t leave because they’d lose tens of thousands in exit fees, and have to pay an outsized ingoing contribution to move elsewhere.”

‘I believe they should be cancelled’ 

Given the money they’d lose if they left their village, Frank and Stella aren’t sure what to do. To make matters worse, they’ve recently been told their monthly fees are going up – a lot. Services that were once part of the deal have been rescinded over the years, but everything costs more.

“The village operator claims wages are the cause of the fee increases, but there appears to be a big difference between the latest CPI figure and the percentage rise in the fees,” Frank says.��

Having spent many hours poring over the wording in his and other retirement village contracts – and having done the maths – Charles Adams is on a mission to improve outcomes for residents.��

“It’s just so complex that it’s not until you actually work out how the costing is done and compare it with a residential tenancy that you come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a bloody con.” 

As for his and his fellow residents’ current contracts, “I believe they should be canceled,” Adams says.��

But the village operator has his $400,000, and what he and his wife may end up getting back someday is out of his hands.

(Frank and Stella are pseudonyms.)

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It would have gone unnoticed by most people who aren’t advocates for older Australians, but a 2021 government report delivered the disturbing news that around 83,000 of us aged 65 and over had been the victims of financial abuse over the previous 12 months.��

Since then the problem of financial elder abuse has only gotten worse – probably a lot worse.��

Financial abuse is a subset of elder abuse in general, which includes even less palatable kinds, such as physical abuse. But, after psychological abuse and neglect, it’s the most common variety – and the psychological abuse often has a financial motive.��

One way it’s perpetrated is when a son or daughter obtains power of attorney over a parent’s finances and helps themselves to assets they’re not entitled to.��

Other forms of financial elder abuse include coercing parents into changing their will in the perpetrator’s favour.

Sometimes abusers find a way to take over the family home so it can’t be sold before the parent dies, even though the parent may need the money for aged care. All of these acts would generally come under the heading ‘inheritance impatience’.��

But then there’s pressuring a parent into loaning or giving you money, or taking it without permission, which are yet other forms of financial elder abuse.

One in six a victim of elder abuse 

While such conduct takes place behind closed doors in intimate family settings, there are clear signs that financial elder abuse is on the rise.��

Reports of abuse to the NSW Ageing and Disability Commission went up 22% between April and June this year compared to the same period in 2023. Taken together, the interrelated issues of psychological and financial abuse comprised 66% of the complaints.��

Between July 2019 and June 2024, reports of abuse to the NSW Ageing and Disability Commission went up 55%. Nationally, it’s estimated that about 15% of Australians aged 65 and older experience some form of elder abuse, and a lot of this would be financial abuse.��

Most of the perpetrators are the adult children of the victims. And most often, the research suggests, it’s a son financially abusing their mother.

It’s not a happy subject, or an easy one to dredge to the surface. It’s personal, it’s familial, and people would rather not talk about it or reach out for help. But it needs to be put on view for all to see, advocates for senior Australians say.

A hidden issue

One of these advocates is Relationships Australia CEO Elisabeth Shaw, whose organisation has been closely involved in the continuing effort to roll back elder abuse in general and financial elder abuse in particular. The organisation regularly hears from victims or their carers from around the country.��

Reports of financial elder abuse are definitely on the rise, Shaw tells ����Vlog, “but a lot of people we hear from would not be wanting any kind of intervention,” she explains.��

“It’s definitely going on more than we know. At this life stage people are just so vulnerable and frightened of falling out with their children and having grandchildren taken away from them and being lonely. They’re scared to speak up.” 

Based on the contacts Relationships Australia receives from affected elders and their carers, they say the family home is often a target for adult children perpetrators, especially after they’ve moved back in.��

“They’re actively coercing the older person to either will the house to them or let them take it over. So that’s one example of where psychological and financial abuse meet.” 

The fallout from the COVID pandemic along with housing costs and shortages has accelerated this phenomenon, Shaw says. “Adult children moved back into the family home, ostensibly to look after their parents. But some have never left and have sort of taken over the home. Children are leaning on parents in a way that hasn’t been seen in previous generations.” 

Financial elder abuse can also just mean having control of a parent’s credit card and using it to buy things for yourself when expenditures on the card are supposed to be for the parent only.��

“It’s something that happens on a day-to-day domestic level, which can actually drain a bank account quite quickly,” Shaw says.

‘Ending up homeless’

CEO of the advocacy group Older Women’s Network, Yumi Lee, agrees the family home is often front and centre in cases of financial abuse.��

“The pressures on older people are great to either sell up and give part proceeds to their children so they can have the downpayment for a home, or to hand over the entire proceeds on the promise that they can live in the ‘granny flat’ behind the new home. Sadly, we have seen relationships breaking down and older women being turfed out of the family home and ending up homeless.” 

Lee says the organisation also sees many cases of adult children misusing powers of attorney “to hoover up their mothers’ assets and savings”, but it mostly goes unreported because “mothers do not want to report their children to the police”.��

‘Victims dependent on their abusers’ 

Mary Lovelock, a senior solicitor at NSW Legal Aid’s Elder Abuse Service, tells ����Vlog that the reluctance to break the silence follows a grimly practical logic.��

“The older person is often dependent on the abuser, who may be acting as their carer. This means speaking out may result in a loss of support and independence, and could damage relationships within a family.” 

It’s also not unusual, Lovelock says, for victims to be unaware of the financial manipulations of perpetrators, especially if they change the victim’s banking details and siphon off funds gradually.��

New ‘Elder Law’ program aiming to increase expertise

The human touchpoints in a financial elder abuse scenario, other than perpetrators and victims, include people in the financial services and legal sectors. Both offer professional guidelines on how to spot and deal with elder financial abuse – and how to prevent it.��

How well these sectors are doing in this area is another question. Lovelock says most banks have some protections in place, but the process of modern banking itself poses a risk for older Australians.�� 

“A large cohort have experienced financial elder abuse as a result of their child transitioning the older person’s banking to online and not giving the older person online access to the account,” Lovelock says.��

Even without such outright deceptions, the forced transition to online banking in general has increased the risk of financial elder abuse, and safer options are being rapidly phased out, she adds.�� 

A government inquiry is currently underway into whether the regulation of financial services is effectively dealing with the issue of elder financial abuse, with a final report due at the end of the year.��

And there are other moves afoot. Earlier this year the Law Society of NSW established a in Elder Law, a branch that focuses on legal issues commonly faced by older Australians. The aim of the new program is to increase the number of legal professionals with expertise in this area and make it easier for elderly people and their carers to find them.��

Understanding the highly personal subtleties of elder financial abuse will be part of the curriculum, NSW Law Society president Brett McGrath tells ����Vlog.��

“Issues relating to elder abuse have become more prominent in recent years, and lawyers can play a crucial role,” McGrath says, adding that “greater public awareness of the issue may help to reduce its prevalence”.��

The accreditation is designed to equip lawyers with the knowledge to advise on powers of attorney matters as well as the delicate issue of allowing others to make major life decisions for you, including financial ones.��

Lovelock says a greater understanding of the rules governing powers of attorney among the people given such powers is one of the missing pieces in preventing financial abuse.��

“Unfortunately we regularly help clients who have had large amounts stolen from their bank accounts as a result of the misuse of a power of attorney,” Lovelock says.��

Yumi Lee says one fundamental problem is that powers of attorney work differently from state to state, which adds confusion. In her view, a nationwide system is long overdue. She says the damage wrought from misuse of these legal instruments can destroy families.��

Abuse often the result of poor planning and communication

With such sensitive issues at play, and a general misunderstanding of what the rules are, Elisabeth Shaw agrees that getting legal help early on is a good idea.��

The research suggests that financial elder abuse is often an outgrowth of poor planning by both parents and their children and isn’t necessarily malevolent in nature, just a series of bad decisions that are rationalised by the perpetrators. Adult children under financial pressure end up taking money they shouldn’t because the parents or a trustworthy carer haven’t put safeguards in place to cordon off such temptations. Informal family agreements – such as the promise of care in exchange for early access to a parent’s assets – often fall by the wayside.��

“I think social awareness is really difficult. People entering old age are under-prepared and under-resourced. A lot of people just aren’t informed about the sort of steps that they should be taking. We’re not having the conversations that we need to have about getting older.” 

Yumi Lee has seen what happens when necessary conversations don’t happen and family bonds break down due to the perverse power of money, and she says the impacts can’t be overstated.��

“It is especially tragic to hear of older women who have worked all their lives to support their family, only to have their children turn against them. It can become a war between siblings with some children feeling totally powerless to stop the abuse being perpetrated by their sister or brother.” 

Who to contact if you see financial elder abuse

• National Elder Abuse phone line (1800 353 374)
• Relationships Australia (1300 364 277)
• NSW Ageing and Disability Abuse Helpline (1800 628 221) 
• NSW Legal Aid (1300 888 529)
• Senior Rights Service NSW (02 9281 3600)
• Senior Rights Victoria (1300 368 821)
• Queensland: Elder Abuse Helpline (1300 651 192)
• Western Australia: Advocare WA Elder Abuse Helpline (1300 724 679) 
• South Australia: Adult Safeguarding Unit (1800 372 310)
• Northern Territories: National Elder Abuse phone line (1800 353 374)
• Tasmanian Elder Abuse Helpline (1800 441 169)
• ACT: National Elder Abuse phone line (1800 353 374)

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It’s not an unusual predicament for older Australians to find themselves in.��

Ross’s wife of 47 years, Margaret, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2016, needed help to continue living at home. They couldn’t afford an aged care facility and Ross didn’t want to send her to one anyway. He’d heard the horror stories, and visited some grim-looking institutions himself.��

But navigating the aged-care bureaucracy, filling out countless forms and finally getting his wife onto a Level 4 home care package, was no small undertaking. It’s the highest level of home care available, meant for people with complex care needs, and includes a range of hands-on services.��

The annual home care government subsidy, about $66,000, and the helpers it made possible certainly eased the burden. But it’s just Ross now. His wife recently passed away.��

The support was critical, but Ross has serious issues with the way the money was handled by the home care provider. Now that his wife is gone, he’s found the time to speak out.��

And he’s far from alone in feeling that home care businesses that draw on government funds can and will put the quest for profits ahead of meeting the highly personal needs of their clients.��

Some say the home care system is broken. The private businesses that provide the services are overcharging, carers are underpaid, and recipients are being shortchanged as a result.��

Money seems to be the driving force. There have been reported cases, for instance, where providers have cherry-picked home care recipients with the least complex care needs because more difficult cases cut into their bottom line.��

Difficult choice, no guidance 

Once the package was finally approved, Ross was left on his own to go through a list of home care businesses provided by the government’s My Aged Care agency. There were several in the area. He ended up picking a business with an office on Sydney’s North Shore  – a private, for-profit operation that’s among the largest home care providers in Australia. He had no way of knowing whether it was the right choice.

The subsidy went directly to the home care provider to be managed. Though Ross had the right to approve which services he wanted, other charges against his subsidy came out automatically.��

These included a $19.50 per day care-management fee plus a $18.50 per day package-management fee. The services rendered for these payments were never made clear.��

Aged care experts say this is a systemic issue. Rates and fees vary widely from provider to provider, making it that much harder for people to know who to trust their subsidy with.��

Pressure to add services 

But what rankled Ross the most – and convinced him the business was chasing profits – was that it was constantly pushing him to spend more.�� 

“The management was always pressuring me to have additional helpers or other services, such as cleaners, gardeners or tradespeople to do house maintenance, because they said I had some unspent money,” says Ross.��

Ross didn’t see the point of using the funds for extras that he didn’t need, and their apartment complex already had a gardener.��

When he finally relented at one point and accepted a cleaning service, a woman showed up without cleaning supplies or equipment. Ross felt sorry for her. She stayed for less than an hour, using what was available, and Ross’s subsidy was charged $110 – much more, Ross believes, than the cleaner was paid.��

In case its costs went over the subsidy amount, the home care provider also asked for Ross’s credit card details. Ross made sure that didn’t happen. Before long, his level of trust for the business he selected to help look after his wife began to decline.��

“They never went over the cap, but they sure tried to,” he says.��

Concern for overstretched workers 

Ross was also bothered by the disparity between how much the workers who visited his home were apparently paid per hour and how much the home care provider charged against his subsidy. The provider’s normal hourly rate was $84.19.��

According to a home care worker who discreetly disclosed the information to Ross, the workers were paid less than half that. When asked, the worker also informed Ross that she and her colleagues received no benefits such as sick leave or paid holidays. (The work week award rate for full-time aged care workers is around $25 to $30 per hour. Casual employees earn around $31 to $37 per hour.) 

“They stood outside my door with their phones and clocked on, because they only get paid for the time they’re here,” Ross says. “They rushed from one job to another. They really get screwed.”

One day, a harried young, home-care worker who he’d never seen before showed up at their house. Ross was due to go to an appointment, but there was a problem – the carer would have had no way of knowing how to look after his wife, or even be familiar with the layout of the house. He assumed the regular carer was sick.��

He cancelled his appointment so he could be there to help, spending the allotted hours showing the helper what his wife needed. They never saw the woman again after that. Ross says other clients of the business reported similar experiences.��

Problems across the sector 

Home care recipients have made the failures of the home care system known to advocacy groups.�� 

Anna Willis, the CEO of Aged Care Justice, says the issues Ross outlines are affecting many.�� 

“We have had cases of providers charging for services but carers not turning up. Or they turn up and stay for a limited time without providing quality service.” 

National Seniors CEO Chris Grice points out the issue of extra services going to existing recipients while others wait. “Providers shouldn’t be delivering and charging for services that are not required or requested by the recipient, especially when there are around 68,000 people waiting for their services to start.” 

“There are ongoing problems with the delivery of care in a consistent fashion, due to workforce shortages and a lack of trained staff,” he says.��

‘The price for everything goes up’ 

Ross’s concern that their home care provider was focused on maximising revenue reached a high point when a nurse not affiliated with the business recommended that he get a hospital bed with a special mattress for his wife.��

“I arranged this through a hospital equipment hiring company and the charge was to be $395, which included rental, delivery and pickup and assembly,” Ross says.��

“The home care provider management heard what I was doing through their home helpers and contacted me to say that this would be covered by my subsidy and they would arrange payment. I did all the organising, all they had to do was the payment.” 

The final charge for the bed against Ross’s subsidy account was $1254.

“Their markup was not a bad fee for just writing out a cheque with my subsidy money,” Ross says. “Once you go through the home care provider, the price for everything goes up.” 

Poor pay, patchy training 

A 2021 Grattan Institute report on the government’s home care program suggests that such outcomes should not come as a surprise.��

“Older people get little advice and support to find services,” the authors write, adding that the number of private services “has grown dramatically, with little oversight of quality and value for money”. There are currently around 1000 home care providers in operation across Australia.��

The report also paints a troubling picture of how the people showing up at your home are treated by the businesses they work for.��

“Home care workers remain poorly paid and under-valued. Training is patchy, work is often insecure, and there’s insufficient supervision, support and staff development,” the Grattan researchers say. “Not surprisingly, it is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain aged-care workers.”

One of the authors of the Grattan Institute report, Hal Swerissen, an emeritus professor of public health at La Trobe University, tells ����Vlog that the current design of the home care system creates incentives for providers to “drive costs up to the cap”, especially through administration fees.��

Administration fees are charged whether or not services are delivered. (In Ross’s case, the $38 daily administration fee was charged whether or not any workers came over.) 

New government program coming in 2025 

The federal government is aware that the home care system has too many problems to continue as is. Based on the findings of the 2021 royal commission on aged care and safety, it announced that Home Care Packages will be replaced by the Support at Home Program starting in July 2025.��

Support at Home providers will primarily be paid on a fee-for-service basis, rather than receiving the full subsidy upfront.��

The new model is expected to increase transparency, mandating quarterly reports showing exactly where the money is going, Swerissen says.��

“This would mean there would be less incentive to upsell,” he says.��

And the actual home care component – the money that pays for workers to visit homes – is expected to be funded separately to other costs for the provider. “This will make it much harder for providers to game the system and gouge clients,” Swerissen says.��

Step in the right direction

Anna Willis of Aged Care Justice says the government’s new plan addresses the core problem in that it gives more control to home care recipients, but the support options also need to be more flexible.��

A major shortcoming of the current system is that it often doesn’t allow recipients to spend the funds on things they really need. Willis tells the story of a home care recipient in poor health whose hot water system failed. She couldn’t afford another one, and it wasn’t included in her home care package.��

“How can that person stay at home comfortably without hot water, which is excluded from home care package expenditure?” 

In another case, a recipient was in desperate need of a new mattress – also excluded.��

“People receiving home care want to make their own decisions about care and pay only for the care they receive,” Willis says.��

Like Swissersen, Willis sees the lack of effective oversight as a fundamental flaw, leaving home care recipients at the mercy of the private market. Navigating the system would be tough for anyone. For aged people with medical conditions, it’s that much tougher.��

“Recipients who have been diagnosed with cognitive decline or physical impairment need support to understand and administer the home care package,” Willis says.��

Chris Grice of National Seniors supports the fee-for-service component of the upcoming Support at Home Program as it will “restrict the capacity of providers to charge variable rates for identical services”.

“The old system was open to exploitation. It is far better to allocate people with a package based on the amount of service provided rather than giving people a budget and asking them to find the best deal.” 

‘No one on their side’ 

The government’s new plan has some improvements, but in Swerissen’s view, tighter government regulation of providers only goes so far. What’s missing is an intermediary between home care recipients and providers that acts in the best interest of recipients.��

The 2021 Grattan Institute report recommends well-resourced regional home care offices run by the government. So far it has committed to a limited version of this, but the aged care experts say it won’t be enough.�� 

“People will struggle to get the information they need, it will be challenging for them to stay on top of the administrative arrangements and the providers will continue to manage them, although within tighter rules,” Swerissen says. “Effectively, older people will have no one on their side that they can talk to to help them manage the system.” 

Toward the end of Ross’s wife’s life, the home care provider had a gala awards event for its staff at an upscale venue nearby. One of the homecare workers Ross knew was picked up in a limousine, as he assumed the rest were. He thought the workers deserved it, but he also wondered how much of his subsidy money was paying for the night.��

Complaints about home care providers can be lodged with the , or call 1800 951 822.

The post Are home care providers exploiting the system? appeared first on ����Vlog.

On this page:

• Death at a hospital or nursing home
• Death at home
• Organ donation
• The funeral
• Registering the death
• Who to notify
• Looking after yourself

Death at a hospital or nursing home

Many people die in a hospital or nursing home. When this happens, the staff will handle most of the formalities and advise any next of kin what steps they need to take.

Most public and some private hospitals will have their own mortuary. The deceased can be kept there until the body is transferred by a funeral director, if you choose to appoint one.��

You can also keep the body at home. However, smaller hospitals and most nursing homes are unlikely to have the facilities for body storage, so it’s important to decide in advance so you can arrange to transfer the deceased as soon as possible.

Death at home

If someone you know dies at home, it’s important to try to stay calm and not jump to conclusions in the stress of the moment.��

If the person’s death was expected, their doctor will probably have been in touch with you or other close friends or family to discuss what will happen next. You can call the doctor’s surgery to ask them to visit as soon as possible. If the deceased doesn’t have a regular GP, call the police instead.��

A doctor is needed to examine the body and determine the cause of death, and to write a medical certificate. A funeral cannot be arranged until the doctor has created this certificate.

If the death is unexpected or you aren’t sure if the person is dead, call 000 immediately, ask for an ambulance, and explain what’s happened as best you can. Once the ambulance crew arrives, they will contact either the person’s GP or the police.��

If the death was unexpected, not certain, suspicious, or the person did not have a regular GP, you must call the police. In some cases, a coroner may get involved to do a post mortem and determine the cause of death.

Doctor’s certificate vs death certificate

A doctor’s certificate of cause of death shouldn’t be confused with an official death certificate, which is issued by the .

Organ donation

If you know the deceased had wished to donate their organs, it’s important to move quickly because the process of donation needs to happen soon after death.��

If the person dies in a hospital, the staff can check that the person is a registered donor on the Australian . This lets authorised medical staff who have permission from the Australian government check your donation information anywhere in Australia, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.��

Consent is always needed before donation can go ahead. So if you wish to donate, discuss your decision with your next of kin and those close to you to make sure your decision is upheld.

The funeral

If a family member or friend dies and you’re arranging their funeral, there are many things to consider and several steps to take. The first thing to check is the will, if there is one, as it may have directions for funeral arrangements.

If you know that the deceased has already chosen a funeral director, be sure to check that they haven’t entered into a pre-paid funeral agreement before you make any new arrangements.

However, the will by itself isn’t enough to ensure funeral directions are followed (it may also not be read until after the funeral). It’s the duty of the deceased’s executor to arrange the funeral and, if there is no will, the senior next of kin will be called on to give personal details of the deceased within one month of the death, so that the death certificate can be registered.��

The law says the executor will take possession and custody of the body from the moment of death until it’s buried or cremated. If nobody is willing to take responsibility, the funeral may be arranged through the government contractor.

What to consider before making funeral arrangements

If there aren’t specific instructions for the funeral, here are some things to consider:

• Have any financial arrangements been made to pay for the funeral such as funeral insurance or a prepaid funeral?
• Did the deceased person have a prepaid burial plot?
• Is there enough money in the deceased person’s bank account to pay for the funeral and have you contacted the bank about accessing the funds?
• Are there any sickness, accident, life, superannuation or private health insurance policies that could pay towards the funeral?
• Was the deceased a returned service person or did they belong to any club, pensioner association or trade union that may entitle them to a payment to help cover funeral costs?
• If you or the deceased person received payments from Centrelink, check with Centrelink about a possible bereavement payment or allowance.
• Did the deceased person have a preference for where to hold the service? This could be different from the actual burial or memorial location.

If the deceased hasn’t specified any of the above, you may want to appoint a funeral director to manage some or all of the funeral arrangements.��

What does a funeral director do?

A funeral director will help with many of the legal responsibilities and guide you through the steps of organising a funeral.��

Some of those steps may include:

• arranging the transfer of the deceased’s body
• registering the death
• preparing a viewing
• liaising on your behalf with the cemetery, crematorium, church or venue of your choice
• organising flowers or music
• consulting with religious community members or a celebrant
• organising an event after the service.

Although you may prefer to use a funeral director to deal with all the logistics, in most states and territories you can organise a funeral yourself. (In WA, you must use a licensed funeral director or obtain a permit from a cemetery board to arrange a funeral without one.) 

Funeral fees

Shopping around for a funeral director is probably the last thing you’ll feel like doing at such a distressing time. But it’s worth knowing that they do vary wildly in terms of costs and services. So get a few quotes or some personal recommendations, bearing in mind that organising the funeral yourself would be much cheaper.��

Choosing a funeral director

If you want to use a funeral director:

• ask for a quote in writing, with an itemised breakdown of the costs. This is a legal requirement in NSW and Victoria, and good practice in other states and territories
• make sure they offer you enough information about your options. Equally, were they engaged and prepared to listen to your requirements?

Once you’ve chosen and engaged a funeral director, a representative from the funeral company will go through the details about what happens next – and take the body, if you choose.��

You’ll have to give information such as the deceased’s name, age, religion and next of kin. You can also discuss when the funeral might be held, or save this discussion for later if you’d prefer.

Registering the death

All deaths in Australia must be registered with the where the death happened. This is usually done by the funeral director but you can do it yourself too.��

Once the death is registered, a death certificate will be issued. You’ll need this certificate to deal with the deceased person’s estate, as well as to claim any insurance, superannuation death benefits (if there are any), and to move any money from the person’s bank account if you didn’t have a joint account.

Who to notify

Once you have the death certificate, you can set about notifying all the institutions and places the deceased has had dealings with. This can include government departments, banks, telecommunications and utilities providers, local councils and any memberships the deceased had.

The Department of Human Services has a handy checklist of some of the more common .

You can also enter the deceased’s details into the , which lets you notify multiple organisations in one go so their accounts can be closed or transferred.

Removing names from mailing lists

You can stop most unsolicited mail being sent to the deceased person by registering with the Association for Data-driven Marketing and Advertising () for the ‘do not mail’ service.

What to do with social media accounts

Most social media sites offer a way to deactivate an account if the account owner has died, usually after they’ve been shown the death certificate. Facebook also lets you “memorialise” accounts if the account owner dies.

Government assistance

Depending on your relationship with the deceased, you may be eligible for government assistance. The Department of Human Services has a detailed list of .

Looking after yourself

It’s easy to lose yourself in the business of organising a loved one’s funeral. But it’s important to look after yourself when you’re experiencing grief, especially after the hubbub of the funeral has passed.

If you’re struggling, a good place to seek help is through your GP, who can refer you to a counsellor or psychologist if you need one.

Otherwise, there are plenty of places to seek out support and assistance when you’re grieving, including:

The post What to do when somebody dies appeared first on ����Vlog.

As if getting older didn’t present enough challenges, Australia’s senior citizens are now also more likely to have their lives upended by scammers.��

Simply put, the older you are, the more likely you are to fall prey to criminals trawling for victims in the digital world or via your phone.��And the problem is only getting worse, as scams have become sophisticated enough to take in even the most cautious of consumers.��

In 2021, Australians 65 and older lost more money to scams than any other age group – about $82 million of the $1.8 billion reported to the ACCC’s Scamwatch, as well as to ReportCyber, financial institutions and other government agencies.��

It was more than double the amount lost in 2020, when scammers made off with $38 million from older Australians.��

Most of the money lost in 2021 was to investment scams, which fleeced Australians out of a collective $701 million by the end of the year. Many of these were cryptocurrency scams, and the 65-plus set were the biggest losers there as well, parting ways with a collective $26.5 million.��

According to more recent Scamwatch data, the typical investment scam victim is a man aged 65 or older, living in NSW, who has met the scammer on social media or responded to a bogus ad, and has then been strung along for several months before relinquishing the money.�� 

Almost half the people in this age range rely on government payments as their sole source of income.

Losing $400,000 to a remote-access scam

Older Australians are also disproportionately affected by remote-access scams (where a scammer posing as a representative from a company you do business with convinces you to install software on your computer or mobile phone and then accesses your bank account).

These types of scams have involved scammers pretending to be from the National Broadband Network (NBN) and other prominent businesses and can be especially devastating. In one case documented by the ACCC, a woman lost $400,000 after her funds were transferred through the cryptocurrency exchanges Coinspot and Blockchain.

Telstra, Amazon and NBN were the three most impersonated businesses reported to in 2021. (IDCare is a nonprofit service operating in Australia and New Zealand that helps scam and data breach victims, especially in the area of identity theft.) 

In another case highlighted by the regulator, a payment redirection scam (where a scammer intervenes in the middle of a legitimate transaction and tricks victims into transferring funds to their account) robbed an elderly grandmother of $370,000 that was meant to go to an aged care home.��

Older people with a disability also lost more money than their younger counterparts in 2021.

Losses increased from 2021 to 2022

In 2022, it was much the same story. People aged 65 and over once again lost more money than other age groups to scammers – $120.7 million in total, up 47% from 2021.��

According to the data collected by Scamwatch, the average phishing scam victim in 2022 was a woman 65 or older living in NSW who received a text message from a scammer impersonating her bank, her child or a road toll company. Clicking on the link led the victim to provide personal information and eventually execute a bank transfer to the scammer’s account.

Older Australians also lost the most to remote access scams in 2022 – $9.2 million. And, as with phishing, the average victim was a woman aged 65 or over, living in NSW, who was tricked into providing remote access to her computer or mobile phone.��

Sometimes online scams affecting older people can have an added twist. In November 2022, the Australian Federal Police and Australian Border Force released a statement outlining the growing trend of older scams victims tricked into acting as drug mules in an effort to recover their losses.��

“We have unfortunately seen instances where people have not only fallen victim to classic inheritance or investment scams and lost their money, but they are then offered false hope to regain their money, some unwittingly working as drug mules for the criminal syndicate,” AFP Commander Kate Ferry said at the time.

Online platforms not helping

Brett Levy, the director of the Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association, says it’s not clear what platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon are doing to prevent scammers from operating in their ecosystems.��

“If we are looking to such platforms to prevent scams from taking place then I’m afraid that will be a failed line of defence,” Levy says, adding that, in any case, “buried in their terms and conditions will be a release of liability”.��

Efforts to make platforms take responsibility appear to face considerable challenges. In 2022, a California federal judge ruled that Facebook was not responsible for deceptive ads on its platform that led to users paying for items they never received. The ACCC also launched a case against Facebook and its owner Meta in 2022, alleging they engaged in false, deceptive and misleading conduct by publishing scam ads that featured well-known Australian public figures.��

Levy says it’s up to senior Australians to take the matter in hand, enlisting the help of their children or other younger digital-age people if necessary to help them navigate the technology and set up stronger passwords and protections.��

“Most platforms have two-factor authentication, yet many users don’t have it set up as it’s considered inconvenient. This inconvenience pales next to having one’s bank account wiped out though.” 

Levy says scams targeting seniors are often “similar in nature and generally coercive”.��

“The scammers bully their victims and are often abusive and lack patience. This alone should be the cue for the would-be-victim, as no company would employ customer care agents that lose their cool with customers.” 

“The biggest red flag is that the scammer’s modus operandi is to take control of the victim’s device. No reputable company would do this, let alone ask for bank details and for them to log on to their account.”

Computer-literate less likely to be scammed 

National Seniors Australia Chief Operating Officer Chris Grice tells ����Vlog that “the economic and psychological distress scammers cause to older people and the community is significant”.��

The organisation’s research shows that its members are contacted regularly by scammers. In a National Seniors survey of 5000 seniors, 22% (1100) said they’d been scammed, with those who were comfortable using computers faring slightly better than those who struggled online.��

“Scams are getting more and more sophisticated. Scammers continually change their strategies to keep ahead of potential victims and sometimes these strategies are targeted specifically at older people,” Grice says.��

“Sadly, scammers take advantage of some older people’s lack of technology knowledge and experience, as well as other vulnerabilities including loneliness.” 

National Seniors has recommended to the banking sector that older people be allowed to opt out of instant payments, “so people have an opportunity to stop a transaction before the money is gone”.

The organisation is also calling on businesses and governments across the board to take steps “to prevent scams and decrease the financial and psychological impact on their victims”.

Tips to avoid getting scammed

The central principle of scam avoidance in today’s world is to stop and think before you act. Be sceptical, cautious, and if in doubt end the communication and seek advice from a trusted source.�� 

• Take the time to think things through and ask yourself if something could be a scam. Scammers typically try to pressure you to act quickly.
• Never hand over sensitive information or personal information to anyone on the phone, via text or online.��
• Anyone asking for your password is probably scamming you. Never give out your pins or passwords.
• If you get a call claiming to be from a company you do business with, hang up and contact the company yourself using contact details from a trusted source (such as the official company website).
• If the emailer, texter or caller claims to be from a company you have no relationship with, simply delete the messages or hang up.
• Don’t send money or personal information to people in unusual locations.
• Be wary if you are asked to pay for something in an unusual way, such as a pre-loaded debit card or virtual currencies like bitcoin. If you are asked to set up a new bank account or PayID to either send or receive money, be suspicious. These are all hallmarks of a scam.
• Be sceptical when reviewing emails, never click a link, or open an attachment in a text or email that you are suspicious of. Make sure the sender is who they say they are, and know what you are opening. If in doubt, delete it.��
• If you receive a robocall (an automated call with a pre-recorded message, sometimes using an automated voice), hang up.��
• Enable two-factor authentication where available.
• Report suspected scams to and .
• If you think you have been scammed, act quickly and contact your bank. You can also seek help from .
• Watch out for follow-up scams. Once successful, a scammer is likely to try again.

The post Older Australians most affected by scams  appeared first on ����Vlog.

The Western Australian government recently announced reforms to the retirement village sector that highlight just how long many departing residents have had to wait to receive the money owed to them by village operators.��

It’s a delay that can and has brought about serious hardship for former residents in WA and other states, since the deferred exit entitlements often constitute most of the money the retirees have to their names.��

The reforms come on the back of an earlier investigation by WA Consumer Protection into financial chicanery across the board in the sector, but they come too late for former WA retirement village residents Bill and Mary*.

They left their village after six-and-a-half years due to what Bill calls “incompetent and unscrupulous retirement village management”.��  

Their story is typical of many retirement village residents around the country. They sold their home to come up with the required $420,000 ingoing loan to secure a unit in a village under a ‘lease for life’ arrangement.��

According to Bill, the big upfront payment didn’t get them much. And when the couple received their exit entitlement after six months, it had been whittled down by various exit fees.��

Life savings at risk

The sums at stake are especially large if they’re held up by the industry’s controversial ingoing loan (or ingoing contribution) system, in which residents relinquish hundreds of thousands of dollars to village operators in order to secure a unit.��

The retirement village operator holds on to this capital, basically an interest-free loan, until the resident departs, then eventually returns the money minus various exit fees – and often minus any investment income the money would have generated.  

At the moment, it is all too often taking operators several years to refund what can be former residents’ entire life savings. Under the proposed new rules, WA retirement village operators would have to hand over exit entitlements to former residents within a year.��

The reforms come in the wake of a steady stream of complaints to WA Consumer Protection in recent years about delayed payments and other retirement village issues. In 2020–21 and 2021–22, the agency received 273 enquiries and 81 complaints about the sector.

“A primary impetus for this reform was that some residents or their estates were waiting as long as three or four years before their payments were received,” Consumer Protection’s director of legislation and policy Penny Lipscombe tells ����Vlog.

Delays in urgently-needed payments

When the proposed reforms were announced in August this year, WA commerce minister Roger Cook acknowledged that the change was a long time coming.��

“We understand the stress that former retirement village residents have experienced by waiting for their exit entitlements for an extended period, especially when the payments are urgently needed to fund alternative independent living or aged care,” says Cook. “We hope these proposed changes will avoid those unfortunate situations.”

The new reimbursement regime would also require village operators to cover a departing resident’s aged care costs, if requested, during the year-long waiting period. (The costs would be deducted from the exit entitlement when it’s finally paid.) 

Former residents given no alternatives 

For Bill and Mary, the delays and additional costs have meant a significant reduction in the amount the couple received once they got their entitlement, but they felt they had little choice but to accept what was offered.��

The six months it took for the couple to receive payment is well within the proposed new timeframe, but Bill believes the village operator could have sold their former unit much sooner.��

“The market was gangbusters when we left and we struggled to procure our new home,” Bill says. “Houses sold in a few weeks. It took them six months to settle ours.”

Bill and Mary had also made numerous improvements over the years, but according to Bill, when they moved out in early 2022, the village operator hit them with a $14,000 refurbishment bill. The couple eventually negotiated this down to $6000.��

“As we had moved into a dirty, empty shell in 2015, we had to make many additions and improvements to make a comfortable home,” Bill says.��

“We poured in about $50,000 to get the home neat and make improvements for more comfort,” he adds. “The lease said that refurbishment paid for by us shall be the cost to return the house to the condition we received it in. So we should have had zero refurbishment costs.” 

All up, Bill says the village operator charged $21,673 more than they should have in exit costs, but the couple ultimately “rolled over”.��

In the end, Bill and Mary got back $320,000 of the $420,000 they originally handed over to the village operator. Still, they were glad to be out.��

“It hurt, but the gain in our mental and physical health was worth it,” Bill says.��

Delayed exit entitlements and steep exit costs aren’t the only way retirement village operators help themselves to residents’ nest eggs.��

In 2017, WA Consumer Protection launched an investigation focusing on potentially unfair terms in retirement village contracts, especially when it comes to fees.��

As Acting Commissioner for Consumer Protection David Hillyard said at the time, “Residents may not be fully aware of the fees and charges which are both ongoing and also payable when they vacate the village. Sometimes the huge amounts payable can catch the residents or their families by surprise.” 

The investigation also focused on the ‘deferred management fee’ that many departing residents must pay.

In Bill and Mary’s case, that fee was $71,050, taking a big chunk out of the exit entitlement they eventually received.��

Unfair hikes in ongoing fees 

Bill and Mary also paid monthly fees of $240, which Bill calls “probably the cheapest in the state”, and continued to pay them for three months after they moved out. (In 2014, the WA Retirement Villages Act was amended to limit continuing fees to three months going forward, down from six months prior to the change.) 

Current retirement village resident Liz* wasn’t so lucky. She was outraged when the monthly fees in her village jumped from $340 to $860 a month, after a newly formed village board held a special ‘budget information’ meeting.��

According to Liz, board members in her village come and go and raise fees indiscriminately, leaving residents financially strapped. She calls the actions of village management a “total abuse of power”, something she didn’t see coming.�� 

“Residents are trapped by misguided advertising and unconscionable conduct, which isn’t exposed until you take up residence,” Liz says.

The costs to residents don’t add up 

President of the WA Retirement Village Residents Association (WARVRA), Ron Chamberlain, says village operators often engage in dubious tactics to separate residents from their money.��

Bill’s story about getting hit with unfair refurbishment costs is common, Chamberlain says.��

“There are groups of operators who expect the residents to pay out on refurbishing the villa. And that causes a lot of people quite a good deal of stress,” he says.��

“They are told that the villa will sell better if they upgrade the kitchen and the bathroom, and that they must do this. Well, some of these things cost $70,000, $80,000, sometimes $90,000, and the residents get very little of that money back.” 

“I often see perfectly good kitchens thrown into a skip bin, and then people are asked to pay $40,000 to upgrade,” Chamberlain says. “That’s the operator seeking other ways to extract money from people. We’re definitely against that. We believe that’s absolutely wrong.” 

In one case, a resident paid $275,000 to move into a village 10 years ago, and when he died the unit was put on the market for $315,000. The surviving members of his family were asked to pay $80,000 for refurbishments and $10,000 for advertising.��

“The arithmetic just doesn’t work when you do that sort of thing,” Chamberlain says. “It’s ridiculous.”

Complex contracts put retirees at a disadvantage 

Chief policy officer for the WA chapter of the Council on the Ageing (COTA), Chris Jeffery, tells ����Vlog that a big part of the problem with delayed exit entitlements and unexpected costs is complex contracts that few incoming residents can comprehend.��

“I think, unfortunately, that we’ve gotten to the position now where people who are contemplating moving into a retirement village probably need an astute family member or a lawyer to help them navigate these contracts,” Jeffrey says. “But that can cost a fortune. For people who don’t have much money, it’s a real issue.” 

Residents left disadvantaged and confused

One Victorian retirement village resident and longtime critic of the industry, Charles Adams, has repeatedly made the point that the ingoing loan system is inherently unfair to residents. He says the system is skewed in favour of village developers and operators.��

Adams believes a straightforward strata title arrangement, which would give residents actual ownership of their unit, should be the norm. As it stands, confusion reigns.��

“The present retirement village milieu is so complex that the only people who presently understand it are the developer operators,” Adams says.�� 

Operators get two-year grace period 

No date has been set for the implementation of the proposed WA reforms yet, but village operators will have two years to comply after they come into effect. Developers and operators have complained that the change would lead to insolvency for villages, but both WA Consumer Protection’s Penny Lipscombe and WARVRA president Ron Chamberlain disagree.��

“There is no evidence of this occurring in other jurisdictions where similar policies are already in place,” Lipscombe says.��

WARVRA had lobbied for a three-month time limit on the payment of exit entitlements, but Chamberlain says he welcomes the reform nonetheless.��

“Operators are complaining that it’s going to ruin their business and so on, but we don’t believe it will. We believe it’ll be better for the industry,” he says

*Names have been changed.

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When ����Vlog first started looking into the funeral services industry in 2019, we had reason to believe consumers were not being well served.

Over the course of a four-part investigation, we found that lack of pricing transparency was entrenched and widespread, leaving grieving customers at the mercy of profit-driven corporations such as Invocare.

Our work led to regulatory changes in New South Wales. As of August 2019, funeral service operators have had to display price lists instore and on their website, and provide cost-itemised quotes.

Deceptive marketing, unfair terms 

Now the ACCC has released its report on the funeral services sector and the regulator’s findings confirm what our investigations unearthed. They also show that the industry still has work to do when it comes to putting customers’ interests above its own.

The ACCC report finds that some funeral businesses are still falling short on fee disclosure, and that some funeral service operators continue to market themselves as small, locally-owned businesses when in fact they’re owned by large corporations.

Other corporate-style conduct came to light, such as the practice of bundling deals with other service providers such as florists or headstone makers, and imposing potentially unfair contract terms, such as excessive interest rates for overdue payments.

Commissions for referrals 

In addition, the ACCC found that online comparison websites and staff working in nursing homes and hospitals may be receiving commissions from particular funeral companies in return for positive recommendations or referrals – a likely violation of consumer law.

“After hearing from consumers about their experiences organising funerals, we are calling on the funeral industry to do a thorough review of their systems, training and marketing practices to ensure they don’t mislead consumers on pricing or other claims,” says ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard.

“At a time of great vulnerability and stress, people organising a funeral should be able to trust they’re not going to be taken for a ride,” says ����Vlog senior campaigns and policy advisor Amy Pereira.��

“While ����Vlog is not surprised by the ACCC’s findings into the funeral industry, we are disappointed that the industry continues to pull up short when it comes to transparency and fairness.” 

“The ACCC’s enforcement work in the funeral services sector continues and we encourage consumers and funeral industry participants to  about practices in the sector,” ���������Rickard.��

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Losing a loved one is devastating enough for families without businesses making it more difficult and confusing than it should be. That’s why ����Vlog is campaigning for industry-wide price transparency and greater consumer protections to make it easy for mourners to compare quotes and arrange a service that best suits their needs.��

Here’s five reasons to join our fight for a fairer funeral industry, starting with upfront pricing.��

1. Funeral pricing is inflated, confusing and exploitative

That was the alarming finding of our investigation into the funeral industry, headed up by investigative journalist Saimi Jeong. Her investigation took in months of research and interviews, as well as the experiences of 548 recent funeral customers, 36 enlisted ‘mystery shoppers’ and one scathing industry whistleblower.

Shockingly, it revealed a range of damning issues and dodgy sales tactics from many operators that could see families pay thousands of dollars extra for even the most basic funeral services. These include:

• inflated, bundled funeral package deals
• opaque and problematic fees
• evasive misinformation from operators
• pushy sales tactics
• monopolistic market practices by funeral business chains, with details of business ownership obscured.

“It is far too hard to find out what exactly you’re paying for when you hire a funeral home,” explains Jeong. “In our national mystery shop, 14 of 36 funeral providers failed to hand over written cost information within 48 hours of making a request.”

“Ten eventually provided only lump sums with no cost breakdown, though some had to be chased even for these. Others emailed quotes with varying levels of cost itemisation.”

The mystery shop also uncovered wildly different prices for a cremation with no ceremony that ridiculously ranged between $1200 to $5600.

“A White Lady funeral home quoted $5600 for a direct cremation in our mystery shop. When we looked at the costs, over half of this was made up by an opaque ‘professional service fee’.”

“We saw unexplained price differences for services like body viewings. On one end of the scale a provider was charging $110 for people to view their loved ones, while another charged an outrageous $1600,” reveals Jeong.

2. Even funeral industry insiders admit there’s problems

After our investigation made headlines last year, an industry whistleblower contacted us with a tip-off about a mysterious fee charged by Australia’s largest funeral operator, InvoCare.��

The publicly listed company owns more than 250 funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums, including the popular White Lady Funerals, Simplicity Funerals and Guardian brands.

The insider revealed InvoCare businesses regularly charged a $352 late fee – vaguely listed as an ‘administration fee’ on invoices – before payment was even late. A lower on-time total was included in the fine print, but it’s easy for customers to overlook or forget to deduct when you’re organising a funeral.

“It is a straight out revenue grab from unsuspecting, vulnerable customers,” the source told ����Vlog, adding that the company “knows full well that the majority of customers will not notice, never complain”.

They pointed out the $352 fee ($320+GST) would in some cases cost more than flowers, clergy and other items on a funeral invoice, “but the customer gets nothing for it. If it was a genuine late fee, $352 is out of line of any reasonable or justifiable cost. It is a complete gouge of customers”.

In response, ����Vlog submitted a complaint to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, arguing that InvoCare has breached consumer law, which states that businesses must provide the minimum total price of a product or service as a single figure.��

In a huge win in February this year, InvoCare pledged it’d remove this fee from its service.

3. Dishonest practices hit grieving families hard

Farewelling a family member is one of the hardest things we ever have to do, and it shouldn’t be made harder by unscrupulous funeral fees and upselling.��As our investigation revealed, such tactics can cause financial hardship, deep sadness and forever sour a final tribute to a loved one.

“Grieving families trust funeral providers to help them lay their loved ones to rest, and that shouldn’t be exploited,” says ����Vlog campaigner Amy Pereira.��

“Families deserve respect and transparency in the process. ����Vlog is determined to protect these vulnerable people from the predatory profiteering we’ve uncovered and change the industry for the better.”

4. We’ve had a big win in NSW, but there’s more work to be done

If this all sounds grim, we’ve got some good news. Not only did our investigation and campaigning lead to InvoCare dropping its dubious ‘administration’ fee earlier this year, it also prompted the NSW Government to introduce rules requiring operators to display more transparent funeral pricing.

Now funeral providers need to show the itemised price of their goods and services, including the cost of their least expensive package. They must also give cost-itemised quotes in writing before entering an agreement and display their prices on their website and in store.��

It’s a promising step forward, but right now, it only applies to New South Wales. So if you live in another state, you’ll still struggle to get a clear price online – that means you’ll have to contact each company and cop the full sales pitch and upsell to get a quote.

While Australia’s biggest operator InvoCare has complied in NSW, disappointingly they haven’t implemented the new regulations proactively to its businesses in other states, which is why we gave it a dreaded Shonky.

“InvoCare is profiting from keeping grieving families in the dark,” says Amy. “NSW made funeral companies display their prices so families wouldn’t be taken advantage of. Companies like InvoCare have done the bare minimum, leaving grieving families in the rest of Australia behind. InvoCare needs to be upfront with all Australians and provide itemised costs for services online.”

NSW is a key win but we here at ����Vlog think all families across Australia deserve transparent pricing, and we’re still fighting to make it happen.

Update: Our campaign is working! InvoCare has publicly committed to displaying price lists nationally. WA Consumer Affairs Minister John Quigley has agreed funeral pricing reforms are “appropriate and reasonable” and says he will look into introducing them in WA. And in August 2021 the Queensland government launched an inquiry into the funeral sector with a focus on price transparency.

5. Joining our fight for upfront funeral costs is easy

As our investigation has uncovered, there’s plenty to improve about the funeral industry but upfront pricing nationwide would be a positive first step.

If, like us, you want it to be the norm and not the exception, we’re urging everyone to email the consumer affairs minister for their state or territory now.��

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