And what financial institutions are legally required to do about it.

Economic abuse does not always start with a bruise. Sometimes it starts with a password. A deleted app. A question answered on someone’s behalf. A debt that appears in a name that did not sign for it.

Under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, economic abuse is formally recognised as a form of domestic abuse. It is carried out through bank accounts, credit facilities, mortgages, open banking permissions, and digital payment systems.

Financial institutions are not peripheral to this issue. They are structurally embedded within it.

And most of them are not ready.

The Scale

The Financial Conduct Authority confirmed in 2024 that more than nine million people in the UK have experienced control, exploitation, or sabotage of their finances by an intimate partner. That is roughly equivalent to the population of London.

Research by Surviving Economic Abuse and Ipsos found that over one million adult women have experienced coerced debt, with average debt levels now exceeding £27,000- a figure that has risen sharply during the cost-of-living crisis.

These are not people on the margins of your customer base.

They are your customers.

Their experiences of abuse may already be visible in transaction data long before they ever feel safe enough to ask for help.

How Digital Banking Has Changed the Nature of Abuse

The features that make digital banking fast and frictionless for most customers can become powerful tools of control in the hands of an abuser.

Banking apps become surveillance systems.
Push notifications become interrogation material.

An abuser can monitor every transaction in real time, drain a joint account in seconds, or track a partner’s movements through ATM withdrawals and contactless payments.

Open banking and fintech aggregator apps can give an abuser with login access a more complete, real-time picture of a victim’s finances than any previous generation of abuser ever had.

The same credentials accumulated during years of shared life can be used to:

• take control of accounts

• lock someone out of their own finances

• pass security checks designed to stop strangers

And existing fraud systems often fail to detect it- because the attacker is not a stranger.

Even when the relationship ends, the control may not. Joint accounts remain joint. Stored credentials continue to work. A digital footprint built over years cannot simply be erased.

What the Law Now Requires

This is no longer a CSR issue.

The FCA Consumer Duty, in force since 2023, requires firms to consider foreseeable harm to customers. Economic abuse clearly falls within that definition.

The Financial Abuse Code provides guidance for responding to financial abuse, and the Financial Conduct Authority has stated that the sector has a vital role to play in identifying and supporting customers experiencing abuse.

A 2025 research project led by Northumbria University, working with Surviving Economic Abuse and several major UK banks, reached a clear conclusion:

Financial technologies are currently not designed to prevent or disrupt economic abuse. In many cases, the same features that create convenience also enable control.

Five Things Banks Need to Do Now

Addressing economic abuse requires more than awareness training. It requires product, governance and vulnerability frameworks working together.

Financial institutions should be considering:

• Friction and safeguards in joint account features

• Discreet in-app disclosure routes that do not generate visible alerts

• Processes to identify and address coerced debt

• Fraud and monitoring systems that do not inadvertently penalise victims

• Adoption of the Economic Abuse Evidence Form, already accepted by a growing number of financial institutions

It also requires partnership with specialist organisations. No bank can design a truly effective response to economic abuse without survivor-informed expertise.

The Opportunity

Victim-survivors are more likely to reach out to their bank than to the police as a first point of contact.

That creates both a responsibility and an opportunity.

Financial systems can be used to control. But they can also be designed to protect.

The first step is recognising how the architecture of financial control actually works.

Download the Full Report

The Hidden Architecture of Control: Financial Abuse, Economic Abuse and the Digital Trap is a full-length publication by Safe Haven Education.

The report includes:

• the legal and regulatory framework

• structural gaps in current banking systems

• a practical checklist for financial institutions

• survivor-informed insights on how economic abuse operates in practice

• seven recommendations for banking leaders

Available to download at safehaveneducation.org