How CBA is using AI to shield female customers from financial abuse
Commonwealth Bank is blocking 400,000 abusive messages each year being sent to vulnerable female customers with a tiny payment attached – a form of coercive control by men that can be a precursor to domestic violence.
This alarming number underestimates the extent of financial abuse taking place in the banking system, as a growing number of perpetrators circumvent the banks’ payment-blocking technology to conduct more nuanced intimidatory behaviour.
Abusers typically try to send a payment of 1 cent to a former partner, for the sole purpose of using the message field in online banking to make threatening or intimidatory comments. Victims can block telephone calls or social media accounts, but it is more challenging to stop an incoming payment, especially when some need to receive legitimate payments, including for child support.
The banking system is being used to perpetrate financial abuse via threatening messages attached to tiny payments. Monique Westermann
“Unfortunately, what we have seen over the last couple of years is customers finding unique ways to weaponise banking products to perpetrate this form of abuse in the context of family and domestic violence,” said Caroline Wall, head of customer vulnerability at CBA. “We don’t think banking products are the place for any form of abuse.”
Current levels of abusive conduct are much larger than initial figures when CBA began stopping threatening messages in 2020. Then, 8000 messages were blocked over a three-month period, or an annualised rate of 32,000. Similar blocking controls have since been put in place by other major banks, backed by standards developed by the Australian Banking Association.
However, CBA said many perpetrators are finding ways around the controls,
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