Dealing with cases of elder financial abuse is difficult because victims are reluctant to make the issue public, according to a senior bank executive.Brendan French, executive general manager, customer and community advocacy, at Commonwealth Bank, said elder financial abuse was almost impossible to rectify after the event because it usually involved family members and the victims wanted to keep it quiet.He said the focus for financial institutions had to be on prevention.In the past couple of weeks both the Australian Banking Association and the Financial Services Council have launched initiatives aimed at getting the industry to deal more effectively with the issue.They are taking their lead from the Australian Law Reform Commission, which reported in 2017 that financial abuse is one of the most common forms of elder abuse."Banks and other financial institutions will often be in a prime position to detect and prevent the financial abuse of older and at-risk customers," the ALRC said in its report, "Elder Abuse - A National Legal Response".Speaking at a Financial Services Council conference in Sydney yesterday, French said that over the past 12 years elder financial abuse had gone from an occasional problem to one that is much more common.Speakers at the conference agreed that a big cause of the problem was "inheritance impatience"; people are living longer and their adult children get sick of waiting to receive their inheritance.Jessica Latimer a lawyer at Moores, specialising in elder financial abuse, said she was often surprised that banks and other financial institutions did not raise the issue with their customers when they saw obvious "red flags", such as unusual account activity.French said the challenge for an organisation with more than 25,000 frontline staff was to design programs that would help them identify behaviour and language that should raise concern.The bank undertook research and consultation before producing a booklet, "Safe and Savvy" for use by customers and staff. So far more than 80,000 copies have been picked up in branches.French said one of the problems branch staff encounter is not knowing whether a power of attorney is current. "We like the idea of a register," he said. He also likes the idea of a referral service. "There is only so much I can do as a banker. What we would lie to be able to do is make a referral to an expert body for investigation."Yesterday the FSC launched a guide for practitioners. It lists common red flags, suggests appropriate responses and recommends a number of organisational policies covering training, monitoring and community awareness campaigns.Red flags include behavioural change, signs of distress and requests to make changes to long-standing financial arrangements.FSC chief executive Sally Loane said the guide was intended to provide a best practice standard for the industry.