Designed to Disrupt™

No one intended for their products to be misused for financial abuse.

But it is hiding in plain sight.

We created Designed to Disrupt^™ as a blueprint for the finance and essential services sectors to reimagine their products and services for financial safety.

This means making changes to prevent or disrupt financial abusers from misusing products as a tactic of coercive control, setting expectations of customer behaviour and providing greater protection to victim-survivors.

Inspired by the Australian eSafety Commissioner’s Safety by Design, each paper explores how businesses and regulators can tackle financial abuse like other financial harms.

Anchored in real-life customer experiences, our Designed to Disrupt^TM reports provide a blueprint for reimagining products for financial safety and shaping the regulatory framework.

Authored by Catherine Fitzpatrick, for each independent report, we:

Listen deeply to people who have lived experience and need your help
Dive into data and customer cases to get a better understanding of the risks
Examine the regulatory and industry context
Apply our financial safety by design framework
Make recommendations and advocate for change.

Does your organisation want to be a thought leader on how businesses can respond to domestic and financial abuse?

Commission an independent report.

Designed to Disrupt™

A blueprint for industry.

Hi. I’m Catherine Fitzpatrick.

In 2022, I had an idea. What if products could be redesigned to disrupt financial abuse and gender inequality?

With almost a decade as a senior executive at two of Australia’s biggest banks, I researched and wrote the first Designed to Disrupt™ report, creating the financial safety by design framework.

I was delighted to partner with the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety to advocate for individual companies, industry and regulators to embrace and implement the recommendations.

Within a year, the first report on banking led 13 banks to introduce new financial abuse terms and conditions. Within six months, the second report on general insurance saw the number of insurers with a ‘conduct of others’ clause double.

Inspired by the Australian eSafety Commissioner’s Safety by Design, Designed to Disrupt^™ is now an industry blueprint.

Reports on energy and water are coming soon.

Download the reports.

“Women should not have to choose between their financial security or their safety. I welcome the findings of this report.”

“Embedding safety by design would be groundbreaking. Banking products should not be used as weapons to harm people. The key opportunities to do that are with joint accounts and lending products, and this report shows just how that can be done.”

“The financial sector is moving towards safety by design. They're starting to talk about that. The work that we have from Catherine Fitzpatrick's informing that.”

“There’s so much that the insurance sector can do to prevent its products from being weaponised and to support people affected by financial abuse. The Designed to Disrupt report on general insurance promises to be a powerful catalyst for change.”

“One of the things that we are learning and recognising, through the excellent work of the eSafety Commissioner in looking at the safety by design principles and the work that Catherine Fitzpatrick has done in the banking sector specifically, is that any system and any product can be weaponised.”

“When the major banks detect persistent financially abusive behaviour ... they are suspending, cancelling or denying the offender access to their account ... thanks in large part to the pioneering work of former bank executive and systems reform expert, Catherine Fitzpatrick.”

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