The Evolving Threat Landscape: How AI is Changing Fraud
It often begins with a phone call. The voice sounds familiar, the story urgent, and the request pressing: wire money now. What many do not realize is that AI can clone that voice, fabricate the story, and engineer the request in a way that feels real.
This is the new shape of fraud. Scams no longer come through as clumsy emails. They are layered, personalized, and engineered for emotional impact. The FBI reported that losses from elder fraud reached $3.4 billion in 2023, an almost 11 percent increase from the year before. For older wealth holders, the risks are particularly acute because of the sheer volume and complexity of their financial lives.
AI-driven fraud now takes many forms, and each is harder to detect:
- Voice cloning scams that impersonate family members in distress. The Federal Trade Commission has warned that scammers now use voice cloning to make their requests for money or information more believable.
- Deepfake video or audio impersonations of trusted people.
- Fake invoices and billing scams slipped into stacks of legitimate expenses.
- Phishing emails or texts customized with personal details scraped from social media.
- Investment or cryptocurrency pitches dressed up with professional-looking materials.
Just to name a few, and you can be confident this list is only growing.
The Added Risk of Going It Alone
When older wealth holders handle bill payment themselves, the risks multiply. Fraudulent credit card charges can go unnoticed, fake invoices may be paid without verification, and unusual requests slip through because there is no second set of eyes. AI scams are designed to appear authentic, which makes them especially difficult to detect in isolation.
Professional support with bookkeeping, bill payment, and related services provides the oversight needed to catch these issues early. Trained teams can identify irregularities, confirm suspicious requests, and maintain consistent controls. This shifts the burden away from vulnerable individuals and onto systems built to protect them.
How Professional Services Create Stronger Guardrails
Professional services put structure around household finances that AI fraudsters struggle to penetrate:
- Clients don’t need to pay anyone directly. They can run it through their dedicated bill payment team of experts who are trained to spot scams.
- Every payment is reviewed, and unusual instructions are verified.
- Audit-ready trails make it easy to see where money is going.
- Consolidated reporting highlights irregular charges or accounts.
- Communication is streamlined, reducing reliance on ad-hoc emails or phone calls.
These layers of oversight reduce risk and provide families with reassurance that someone is watching the details.
Building Confidence Across Generations
Protecting older wealth holders from fraud creates more than immediate safety. It builds confidence with the next generation. When heirs see that their parents’ financial lives are being safeguarded, they recognize a partner who is invested in the family’s well-being as well as its wealth. That recognition creates continuity, making it more likely that the relationship will extend across generations when wealth transfers.
That continuity matters because fraud will not stand still. AI is making scams more convincing and more dangerous with every passing year. Families who try to handle everything themselves will find it harder and harder to stay ahead. Professional support with bookkeeping, bill payment and more provides protection that evolves with the threat, giving families security today and building trust that future generations can rely on.
If you think you or your clients are at risk, get in touch with our team.
About Aquilance:
Aquilance is run by a team of executives with deep financial industry expertise, as well as a dedicated employee base with 10+ years of experience on average, who are devoting their careers to the families and advisors whom we serve. The longevity of both client relationships and employee tenure underscores our dedication to client needs and commitment to their continued success. This is equally beneficial for asset managers and trusted professional advisors who rely on these services to advise clients.
Aquilance provides transparency into family finances through personal bookkeeping and securely managed bill pay using proprietary technology and best practices, multi-entity accounting across a family’s trusts, holdings, and investment entities, including complex partnerships, and may also include payroll services, assistance with insurance review, and much more.
Each client family is paired with a dedicated relationship manager and team to manage onboarding and design of a personalized roadmap for long-term success. This team-based, tech-enabled approach ensures nothing sis missed, offering clients and their professional advisors a comprehensive view of their financial matters. All of this is underpinned by a level of personalization that is deeply ingrained in the firm’s 37-year history.
