The U.S. House passed this week the Senior Safe Act, which is designed to help protect American seniors from financial exploitation and fraud.
The legislation, authored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO), now moves to the Senate for approval.
The bill would offer support to regulators, financial institutions, and legal organizations to educate their employees on identifying and preventing financial exploitation of seniors.
“As the Chairman of the Senate Aging Committee, putting a stop to fraud and financial exploitation targeting seniors has been my top priority,” Collins said. “I am pleased that the House unanimously passed our commonsense plan, based on Maine’s innovative Senior Safe program, which will empower and encourage our financial service representatives to identify warning signs of common scams and help prevent seniors from becoming victims.”
Financial fraud targeting older Americans costs seniors an estimated $2.9 billion annually.
“Helping protect our seniors from financial exploitation is a goal we can all get behind, and I’m glad my House colleagues are continuing to move this commonsense plan forward with broad, bipartisan support,” McCaskill said. “Financial professionals ought to be able to safely and securely take steps to protect seniors and their life savings when they’re often the ones who can best identify and spot signs of fraud or abuse.”
The bill would encourage banks, credit unions, investment advisors, broker-dealers, insurance companies and insurance agencies to report suspected senor financial fraud. Further, it would protect institutions from being sued for making reports.
It has been endorsed by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA), the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), the Credit Union National Association (CUNA), the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU), the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI), Transamerica, and LPL Financial.