Keystone Today

Last month, the Department of Banking and Securities, Department of Aging and the Insurance Department issued a joint letter to U.S. Senate and Pennsylvania senators calling for legislation to protect senior citizens.

Secretary of Banking and Securities, Richard Vague, Secretary of Aging, Robert Torres and acting Insurance Commissioner, Michael Humphreys, urged senators to support House Resolution 5914, known as the “Empowering States to Protect Seniors from Bad Actors Act,” according to a June 15 press release.

“With a growing population of older adults, Pennsylvania has a duty and vested interest in protecting its seniors from scam artists looking to prey on them for financial gain,” Vague said in the release. “This legislation allows states to access additional tools to help ensure the safety and security of older adults in the commonwealth.”

The bill introduces a senior investor protection grant program; the release stated. This would allow state securities and insurance regulators to access grant funding for the development and implementation of data-driven programs for the reduction of senior investment fraud.

Humphreys said scam artists and bad actors often target the older population of Pennsylvania through a variety of schemes that negatively impact their financial stability as well as their independence.

“The Pennsylvania Insurance Department has prioritized consumer protection in the insurance industry, and under Governor Wolf, worked to strengthen annuity requirements to protect seniors from losing their hard-earned money to scams,” Humphreys said.

The Department of Aging published a Financial Exploitation Study in September 2020 that highlighted the impacts of scams and theft of Pennsylvania’s older population. The study found 1,488 cases of theft amounting to an estimated $58 million lost, according to the release.

Torres said that passing HR 5914 would help protect older adults and their investments from financial exploitation. He called for the Senate to act quickly and pass the legislation.

“Financial exploitation is a rapidly growing problem in the commonwealth,” Torres said. “It causes great harm to older adults, and we know it is significantly underreported. The Department of Aging has worked extensively on finding multi-disciplinary approaches to protecting older adults from and preventing this type of abuse, particularly after releasing a study on financial exploitation of older adults, forming a task force to address this issue, and working to implement the recommendations from this group.”