How financial advisors can help stop human trafficking and aid survivors

Financial advisors who learn more about the extent and effects of human trafficking can provide crucial services and aid to survivors and victims of a disturbingly rising type of crime in the U.S.

As prosecutions for forced labor and sexual coercion climb alongside what an expert describes as only marginal progress toward the level of awareness that is necessary to confront the problem, planners who embrace the profession's call to serve pro bono clients can tap into educational resources on how to assist survivors and spot the red flags. 

The ways in which financial planners can work to prevent human trafficking and help survivors show one way that the profession intersects with psychology; advisors may well need to refer some clients to therapy.

The cases occur in "every single town" in the U.S., where people are "just starting to talk about this being a huge, huge issue" and "this is not an overseas thing," said Kristy Norbert, the executive director and co-founder of Empowered Network, a nonprofit trafficking survivor support organization formerly known as the Empower Her Network. 

Advisors' role in "breaking those cycles of exploitation and poverty" carries "an amazing impact, if we look at generational wealth," Norbert said in an interview.

"It's happening right in front of our faces, and we just don't know it because it's not necessarily what we think of," she said. "It's definitely something we need to talk about more and we need to be part of solutions."

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Norbert's organization collaborates with Savvy Ladies, a nonprofit launched by planner Stacy Francis in 2003 that has provided a free helpline and financial education services to more than 25,000 women through the participation of more than 200 planners and other volunteers. One of them "made the initial connection to introduce the two organizations," Savvy Ladies Executive Director Judy Herbst said in an email.

"Once we met, we knew we could be a great resource for the Empower Her Network clients. Our volunteers are empathetic, are good listeners and motivators and speak from a place of sincerity and honesty and want to help women from all backgrounds and situations achieve financial success and financial independence," she said.

Since "many Savvy Ladies clients are from underserved and under-serviced locations and do not have access to financial education and financial services," they're often "very similar to trafficking survivors" in that many are women who are "suffering from financial abuse" and most "have not managed their own money, so need to learn and build their financial confidence," Herbst said.

The organizations' work is taking place against a backdrop of climbing trafficking crimes. 

Federal prosecutions more than doubled to 1,672 defendants in 2021 from only 729, according to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. After identifying 9,619 cases involving 16,999 victims last year, the National Human Trafficking Hotline has tracked 100,891 cases with 197,000 victims since its inception in 2007. Worldwide, as many as 27.6 million people were in some form of forced labor in 2021 — a figure that balloons to 49.6 million when including forced marriage, according to statistics from the "Global Estimates of Modern Slavery" report cited by the State Department.

"Although the government meets the minimum standards, in some cases survivors continued to be arrested for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked, and some victim-witnesses did not receive needed protections during their case," State's latest "Trafficking in Persons" report concluded. "There was a continued lack of progress to comprehensively address labor trafficking in the United States, such as in efforts to identify victims, including those who participate in U.S. visa programs; provide labor trafficking survivors with specialized services; and hold labor traffickers, including contractors and recruiters, accountable. Funding for victim services remained inadequate, as did the availability of affordable, safe and stable housing options for survivors."

Advisors interested in getting involved with prevention and survivor services can start with education and training from sources such as Norbert's organization to ensure they don't unintentionally trigger trauma when they speak to the pro bono clients, she noted. Survivors may feel a sense of judgment or the thought that "now I have to disclose the most terrible, awful thing about my life" to answer questions about their personal finances that may seem like normal subjects to other clients or prospective customers, she said.

"You have to build a lot of trust to be able to have a financial advisor in your life," Norbert said. "It's really hard to understand why people stay, how they get into it and how they would allow these types of things to happen. It's just a lack of education, because that's not at all what's happened. … My best advice is, stick to everything that they know really well and let the survivor or the client lead with what they're comfortable with sharing or saying."

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Signs that someone may be the victim of exploitation through forced sex or labor include: someone else is managing their money or mobile phone; they "don't know answers about their own finances"; they may be working off the books at their job; they may display "any type of loss of control or nervousness," she noted. Victims are often looking over their shoulder, so "they're not going to say it," but they'll "show it in other ways," she added.

"Any time you have a gut feeling that something is wrong here, then something's wrong," Norbert said. "It never hurts to call the authorities to say, 'Hey, I had this interaction with this person.' And then it's like you did everything you possibly could. Sometimes that was the only outlet that person had, that was the only chance that someone had to notice what they were saying between the lines."

Once the victims do manage to escape their abusers — who are usually, like elder fraud perpetrators, known and trusted acquaintances beforehand — they need guidance on concerns such as credit card debt, tax status, 401(k) plans at new employers or opening savings accounts, she said. Planners' roles come into play there as well.

Savvy Ladies' helpline is a source "where women with a financial question submit their question and get matched with a pro bono financial professional to answer that most pressing and critical question — many of the women are facing a financial crisis and do not have a safe, unbiased, trusted place to turn to," Herbst said. "Savvy Ladies is dedicated to helping women answer their financial questions and helps in areas covering debt management, budgeting, divorce and money questions, credit card debt — our volunteers listen and give quality guidance to help move these women forward with actionable steps. Building financial confidence starts with asking a question and getting an answer that is actionable, reliable and trusted." 

Norbert's organization also welcomes advisor inquiries about training resources and volunteering to serve survivors who "have a lot of goals and dreams they want to accomplish," she said. In the wake of their trauma, questions about personal finance represent "wonderful problems to have" for survivors, "but they don't have guidance anywhere," Norbert said. 

"Money had been used in all the most awful ways in their trafficking experience," she said. "By the time that they exit the life and receive some sort of stability, they come to us."