Lessons from Canada’s approach to extending financial access to survivors of modern slavery

This briefing provides practical insights and lessons for the financial sector, including supervisors and regulators, based on the Public Private Partnership (PPP) approach taken by Canada to increase financial access for people with lived experience (‘survivors’) of modern slavery.
Banks participating in the Survivor Inclusion Initiative (SII), especially those who work on the basis of referrals from survivor support organizations (SSOs) such as those in Canada, understand that barriers exist for survivors to gain access to financial services. In many instances, a survivor may not have access to the standard official documents to prove their identity or address; banks working with SII know they need to look for alternative documents that they can rely on to validate the survivor’s identity and meet banks’ legal obligations. Financial institutions (FIs) require information such as credit history and proof of income for some financial products.
Survivors may not have a regular income, they may also have a damaged credit history, or even a criminal record as a result of their experience of exploitation.
Participants in SII know that survivors’ experiences can be taken into consideration in the application process, if it is not an automated decision or if there is an option to manually intervene on automated screening processes.
This understanding has been developed mainly because the referral partnership includes SSOs and the process is informed by the needs of survivors.