Why It Matters

The problem we're working on

We all expect to manage our own money for as long as we live. In reality, very few of us do.

As we get older, our health and memory change. A stroke, a fall, the early stages of dementia, or simply the gradual slowing that comes with age — any of these can make handling money harder than it used to be. When that happens, we may delegate money decisions to someone else.

Sometimes delegation is formal: you appoint a Power of Attorney. Sometimes it is informal and gradual. An adult child, family member or carer starts helping with the online banking, or is given the bank card to do the shopping. Nobody signs anything. It just happens, a little at a time.

Either way, you have delegated the management of your money to someone else. Not the money itself — it stays yours — but the decisions about it.

Delegation is normal, and it works — when it comes with structure. Businesses have delegated financial authority for centuries, and they pair it with clear responsibility, accountability and transparency. Families have been left to rely on trust alone.

Trust is not the weak point. What has changed is how much weight it now has to carry — and for how long. Life expectancy has risen, but so has the share of life spent in poor health. Since the 1970s, advances in cardiovascular and other modern medicine have turned once-fatal events into chronic conditions that people live with for years. A 2024 Mayo Clinic study found that in Australia the gap between living and living well is now 12.1 years — one of the largest in the world.

That means years of financial vulnerability — not months — in which another person can move your money.

And almost nobody is watching. When a company hands someone authority over money, the safeguards come with it — clear responsibilities, records, someone who signs off. When a family does the same thing, the authority arrives on its own.

That is the gap. Not bad people. Missing safeguards.

Liking someone is not the same as trusting them

Most of us don't much like our banks. But we trust them with our life savings without a second thought.

Why? Not because banks are unusually good at hiring honest people. It's because banks are built so that no one person can quietly take your money. Two people sign off. Transactions are logged. Someone independent checks the books. The opportunity to defraud has been designed out.

We trust the system, not the individual.

Families work the other way around. We love our family members, so we assume love is enough, and we put nothing else in place. No boundaries, no records, no one else looking. Then we're surprised when something goes wrong.

It rarely begins with bad intentions. Left unnoticed, a small thing quietly becomes damage that can't be undone.

The answer isn't to trust your family less. It's to give your family the same thing a bank gives its customers: clear roles, clear expectations, and a record everyone can see.

That protects your money. It also protects your family — because when everything is visible, nobody has to wonder, and nobody gets wrongly accused.

It is usually family — and so is the protection

There is a name for this: elder financial abuse. It means someone using an older person's money or property without permission, or against their interests. It covers outright theft. It also covers the grey areas — a loan that was never repaid, a gift that was pressed for, a card used for the shopping and then for other things.

It is rarely a stranger. The NSW Ageing and Disability Commission reports that the person alleged to be responsible is usually someone the victim knows — a family member, a friend, or a carer. Nearly one in five financial abuse allegations involve the misuse of a Power of Attorney.

Also family.

A family member is usually the one accused. A family member is usually the one who raises the alarm. A daughter who notices the withdrawals. A son who spots cash taken from an ATM three suburbs away. The people closest to you are both the main risk and the main protection.

That is not a contradiction. It is the whole opportunity.

Families are never shown how to help an older relative with money. No one hands you a guide when your mother starts needing help with the banking. So people improvise — some of them badly, most of them well, and almost none of them with any record of what was agreed.

Given the right tools, your family is the most valuable safeguard you have. They already know your habits. They already care. What they lack is clear roles, a way to see what's happening, and permission to ask questions without it feeling like an accusation.

That is what we are building: a financial safety network for your family, and the tools to run it. Transparency protects the person helping as much as the person being helped — nobody has to wonder, and nobody gets wrongly blamed.

What we're doing about it

Delegation risk is not new, and business has managed it for centuries. Shareholders own a company but don't run it — someone else does, with their money. So companies built safeguards around it: clear responsibilities, accountability and transparency, and insurance for the times that is not enough.

Two of them do most of the work: transparency and insurance. We're bringing both into the family home.