Careful, a first-of-its-kind mobile application to monitor the day-to-day financial security of the elderly, on Wednesday announced a pilot program with insurance carrier Nationwide to help raise awareness about elderly abuse and prevent it. potential to be revealed.
The Careful application monitors checking, savings and credit card accounts for more than 30 data points that may be “red flags” older adults have fallen victim to major financial abuse. These include late or missed payments, changes in spending behavior or other unusual banking activity, such as recurring cash transfers or charitable contributions that have not been properly screened.
During setup, senior citizens added family members and caregivers to their “Circle of Care” to receive notifications if any suspicious issues are detected by the app.
In a nationwide partnership, Carrier is sharing Careful educational content from its web environment, as well as directing those interested in the application to the startup’s site where they can sign up for the service.
Careful dashboards that consumers see.
Separately, Careful co-founder Todd Rovac said the company launched a “Pro” offering at the end of last year specifically for financial advisors.
Consultants can invite clients to use Careful under their own brand, and manage and monitor information on all clients through a unified dashboard. That said, the dashboard can help consultants know when to check in with clients and possibly intervene to prevent any fraudulent activity. Advisors may also send clients materials from Careful’s “Take Care” site with information on preventing financial fraud.
“We’ve been very fortunate that (account aggregation) is something they’ve been doing manually for a long time and that helps them hold onto customers or add customers for the next generation,” Rovac said.
“This represents high impact with a minimal amount of additional work,” he said, noting that applications on average 4.2 accounts—typically banking accounts as opposed to brokerage accounts, which advise advisors in their day-to-day aggregation. is done -and usually in many institutions.
And the need for tools to assist caregivers has never been greater. according to 2020 annual care in america Study conducted by AARP (latest available), 42 million Americans work as unpaid caregivers for someone over the age of 50. This equates to one in five Americans playing the role, usually to a friend or family member, often an aging parent (or both parents).
While the total estimates of annual losses due to major fraud in the US are all over the map, ranging from less than $10 billion to more than $100 billion. Most suspect that it is rarely reported due to embarrassment or lack of discovery.
Rovac says the app helps users detect unusual patterns in banking activity. “What a counselor will probably see is a systematic drain where a family member, possibly a new spouse, is staying away from, or taking advantage of, this person.”
Andrew Blass, president of Atlantic Private Wealth, a Chapel Hill-based registered investment advisor with $650 million in assets under management, has been using the non-advisory version of the Careful application for some time, and most recently became a pro. Beta testing has started with the version. Handful of customers.
While interest in the application often begins with seniors and concerned caregivers, Blass said it is customers who approach them with concerns about parents adopting the device.
Blass saw the benefit of the app in his personal use when he flagged three checks that were simultaneously cashed from a home cleaning service. Turns out the service simply cashed all valid checks at once, but Blass said he may never have noticed that pattern.
“There the use case became clear to me,” he said. “It’s a very real, real, problem, and it’s a very elegant way — probably one of many in the future — that will potentially be of great help.”
Advisor Screen on Careful
Blass said he has no plans to charge customers for the service.
“If it is something useful and can help the customer then it should be part of the standard service that we are offering,” he said. Although the program may have issues with having too many subscribers; The amount of flags being raised on the platform will require some fresh thinking about workflows, he said.
Pricing is straightforward. Consultants can share the Common Application with clients for $119 per year each. With the Professional version, consultants get integrated dashboards and carefully-made content to send to clients under their own brand, among other features, for $129 per seat per year.
