Context

An estimated 2.4 million people age over 16 experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024. It is a deeply rooted problem in UK society, with men and women affected, the latter being disproportionately highly affected.

Domestic abuse is the control of and exertion of power over an individual by a current or former partner, family member or friend. Economic abuse is an increasingly recognised form of domestic abuse which involves exploitation, sabotage and restriction someone’s economic resources, including forcing them to take out credit or doing so in their name without their knowledge (‘coerced debt’). As a debt advice service, StepChange sees many kinds of clients who have experienced coerced debt.

The study

StepChange undertook this study with the aim of exploring the prevalence, experience and impact of coerced debt, barriers to good outcomes for people experiencing it, and implications for regulation, policy and practice in the UK.

The report was produced by StepChange based on:

• StepChange debt advice client data.
• A survey in Nov 2023-Jan 2024 sent to a random sample of 1,500 recent StepChange clients and completed by 370.
• A national, online survey run by YouGov in Nov 2024, returning a sample of 2,138 UK adults (aged 18+) which was weighted to be representative of the UK population.
• Interviews in Jul-Oct 2024 with six current and past StepChange clients, recruited from various sources, with experiences of economic abuse including coercive debt.
• A focus group in Dec 2024 with six StepChange debt advisors experienced in handling complex cases.

Problem debt and financial difficulty referred to in the report were measured, respectively, based on experiencing three or one of the following: made only minimum repayments on debts; used an overdraft in each of the last three months; used credit, loans or an overdraft to make it through to payday; missed payments on essential household bills; used credit to meet existing credit commitments; received late payment/default charges; missed a regular monthly payment on at least one debt; used credit to pay essential household bills.

Key findings

• Awareness and understanding: 62% of UK adults had not heard the term economic abuse and 68% had not heard of coerced debt.
• Prevalence of coerced debt: 12% of clients had experienced coerced debt, and an estimated 1.6 million UK adults had experienced it in the last 12 months.
• Links to financial outcomes: 31% of clients experiencing coerced debt had experienced problem debt, and 62% had experienced financial difficulty. 17% of UK adults in problem debt had experienced recent coerced debt.
• Getting support: 58% of UK adults who had experienced coerced debts did not seek help with their debts. A lack of compassion, inconsistent practice and insufficient support, particularly from creditors and suppliers, were reported. Specialist support may be poorly suited to people’s needs, especially if awareness of support or willingness to disclose coerced debt is low.
• Debts written off: 67% of the UK population did not think a victim-survivor, described to them in a hypothetical scenario, should be responsible for repaying coerced debt. Only 12% of clients and 13% of UK adults with coerced debt had had them written off.
• Barriers to better debt advice outcomes: inadequate specialist knowledge, training, funding and disclosure environments in the debt advice sector; inconsistent creditor expectations and accountability; difficulties separating joint unsecured debts and mortgages; credit file inflexibilities.
• Recommendations: a cross-government economic abuse taskforce; a consistent industry-wide approach to economic abuse; support for and facilitation of wider roll-out of Money Advice Plus’s Economic Abuse Evidence Form; coordination of a credit restoration and repair framework for people experiencing coerced debt by the new Credit Reporting Governance Body.

Points to consider

Methodological strengths or limitations:

• ·The report does not give the size or period covered by debt advice client data. However, it should be reliable and representative of StepChange clients if it reflected a census of clients for a sufficient period.
• The response rate for the client survey was 25%. This is high given the client base and topic but might nonetheless have resulted in a biased sample.
• While the national survey sample was weighted to be representative on key observed demographic variables, there may still have been bias from unobserved differences in the non-responding group.
• Details are not given about how the qualitative data (interviews and focus groups) were analysed.
• In addition, sample sizes across the data collection methods were relatively small, and statistical significance tests of survey data were not evidently undertaken, which limits the confidence with which the findings can be generalised to the wider population.

Applicability

• The study should be of value to Government, regulators, policymakers and practitioners with an interest in debt advice outcomes among people experiencing economic abuse.
• The authors advise the reader that the report contains details of domestic abuse which some may find distressing.

Relevance

• The study is highly relevant given the significant, adverse financial wellbeing impacts evidenced among people experiencing economic abuse, the current regulatory and provider structural landscapes which the report identifies as barriers to coerced debt resolution, and the implied social injustice of these barriers.

Generalisability/transferability:

• Notwithstanding the limitations noted above, learning based on the StepChange clients included in the study should transfer well to other UK national debt advice charities.