Bendigo Bank has today introduced new measures to better protect its customers from the insidious and sometimes hidden impact of financial abuse.
Effective today, changes to the Bank’s Terms and Conditions will give the Bank the power to suspend, cancel or deny individuals access to products or services if the Bank identifies them as engaging in financial abuse.
Examples of this conduct may include:
- Making defamatory, harassing or discriminatory comments to any person, including through payment descriptions or references.
- Using or encouraging threatening or abusive language.
- Engaging in coercive or controlling behaviour, e.g. to restrict a person’s account access or use of funds; or
- Promoting or encouraging physical or mental harm to any person.
Chief Customer Officer for Consumer Banking at Bendigo Bank, Taso Corolis said the Bank was committed to the fight against financial abuse.
“At Bendigo Bank, we’re working hard to improve support offered to financially vulnerable customers, employees, suppliers, and our wider community,” Mr Corolis said.
“The changes to our Terms and Conditions are an important step on our journey to better protect and support potential and actual victims of family and domestic violence and financial abuse.
The important changes come after the Bank signed up to The Respect and Protect initiative, led by social enterprise Flequity Ventures earlier this year.
“The Bank thanks Flequity Ventures for the good work they are doing in the space, and we look forward to continuing to work with them,” Mr Corolis concluded.
The initiative asks businesses to promote and protect customers and communities against financial abuse, particularly in the banking, insurance, telecommunications and energy sectors where perpetrators have the ability to threaten their victims or accrue debt on their behalf.
The updated Terms and Conditions begin for new customers from today, 5 December 2024, with existing customers covered from 5 January 2025.
The Bank further protects its customers, employees and the wider community with a series of other measures.
For our customers this includes:
- A specialised team within the Bank which can help survivors, or their authorised representatives regain control of their finances and will always protect confidentiality and safety.
- Education in the communities we operate in and support programs that uplift digital literacy and independence for vulnerable or excluded groups and individuals, through partnerships with Rural Women Online and the Good Things Foundation.
- Our Financial Inclusion Action Plan faces into and addresses a number of confronting issues experienced by some of our customers including domestic and family violence and puts in place direct and indirect supports to enable fair and equitable access to our services.
- The introduction of built-in features designed to protect you and keep you safe at our digital bank Up. These include the ability to mute or block payments from certain people and options to disable contacts from seeing you. For more information on Up’s Financial Abuse policies, please visit: https://up.com.au/blog/stopping-payment-abuse/
- Providing information and referrals to support services from our website.
For our people this includes:
- Leave entitlements for any employee experiencing; or supporting a close relative who is experiencing; family and domestic violence, including financial abuse.
- A specialised team to help employees who are experiencing financial vulnerability due to domestic and family violence or who are impacted by financial abuse.
- Employees and their family touched by domestic and family violence can also access free, professional counselling from our employee assistance program.
For more information or assistance, please visit: https://www.bendigobank.com.au/support/financial-abuse/
