The Role of Reverse Mortgage Loan Officers in Spotting and Reporting Elder Abuse

This morning Reverse Mortgage Daily published an article I wrote on Elder Abuse. The piece covered the session on Elder Financial Fraud at the NRMLA Reverse Mortgage Annual Conference in San Diego last month. The comments on the piece on Reverse Mortgage Daily raised an interesting question: What role, if any, should loan officers have in spotting and reporting elder abuse? Clearly, it is not the main purpose of their job. But I do think that loan officers are in a unique position to spot and report elder abuse. They often visit a senior's home, and, in seeing the condition of the home and learning the senior's financial information, can be exposed to red flags that an outsider might not see.

Someone compared elder abuse to the difficulty spotting child abuse when a child is beaten, but I do not think they are anywhere near the same thing. The question of corporal punishment for a child by their parent is very different than cases of elder abuse. Elder abuse involves seniors, many of whom are frail, incapacitated, or otherwise dependent on their child. I have a hard time thinking of a situation where slapping a senior would ever be seen as appropriate, but this question is not related to elder abuse, especially elder financial abuse.

Some of the clearest elder abuse cases involve seniors living in squalid conditions, being deprived what they need for survival. A home visit will reveal those things, for example. Elder financial abuse may be harder to spot, but if the senior does not understand the product and/or the child is planning to take all the money, those might be red flags.

While spotting elder abuse may not be part of a reverse mortgage loan officers "job description," they are in a position to make an impact. By educating them and empowering them to do so, they might be able to make a difference in the lives of some seniors who need help. And isn't that what a reverse mortgage is supposed to do anyway?