Online monitoring of financial capacity in older adults: Feasibility and initial findings

Introduction: Impairment in financial capacity places older adults at risk of fraud or abuse and can be a harbinger of loss of independence. Online automated monitoring of financial transactions offers an objective, unobtrusive, and continuous data collection strategy to minimize risk and to detect early changes in an important complex activity of daily living. Methods: Ninety-three participants used an online financial activity monitoring platform that extracted metrics related to use and potential departures from established patterns of financial behavior. Standard neuropsychological assessments and a performance-based measure of financial capacity at baseline were compared using continuous monitoring metrics. Results: Participants demonstrated a willingness to engage with an online financial activity monitoring system. Online metrics were not associated with performance in specific cognitive domains. Performance on an established test of financial capacity was negatively correlated with a ratio of alerts to transactions, that is, a higher likelihood of errors or deviations from previous activity. Discussion: To our knowledge, this is the first reported study using secure online technology to link ongoing unobtrusively collected financial activity monitoring data with other objective measures of function and cognition in a cohort of independent living older adults.