Financial exploitation of older Americans affects families, society and the overall economy, Patrick T. Harker, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, said Tuesday.

The interconnectivity of the issues related to elder financial health could make it more systemically dangerous than the sum of its individual parts. “The sheer size and complexity pose a challenge for industry and regulators alike,” he added.

Representatives of financial institutions, regulators and financial advisors met Tuesday and Wednesday at a conference in Philadelphia sponsored by the Consumer Finance Institute and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve to discuss “Aging, Cognitive, and Financial Health: Building a Robust System for Older Americans.”

Part of the problem with tackling elder financial abuse is that data is not even known about the size of the problem, and many questions remain about how the brain ages and who is susceptible to cognitive decline. Estimates of the cost of financial abuse range from $3 billion a year to $36 billion and even that does not take into account the social costs, said Harker. It is an issue that has to be addressed by both regulators and the financial industry.

Another part of the problem is that most people retiring now receive a large lump sum payment from a defined contribution retirement plan and that money has to be managed, said Craig Copeland of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, leaving them open to scammers and thieves. “When the retirees reach a point of cognitive aging, that can be a problem.”

Geoff Sanzenbacher of the Center for Retirement Research pointed out that an advisor may start out working with a client, but then may end up working with that person’s spouse or children because “a simple bank account may have turned into a complex retirement account.”

Research work is in its infancy to try to predict who will experience serious cognitive decline, including mild cognitive impairment and dementia, in later life, said Patricia Boyle, a researcher at the Rush University Medical Center, at the conference. Financial decision-making is often one of the first areas impacted by cognitive decline.

Approximately 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease today, a figure that is expected to rise to 14 million by 2050, Boyle said. Her research includes a study of 2,000 people from the Chicago area who have been followed since 1997 to see how their brains age. The test subjects have agreed to let researchers autopsy their brains after they die. The goal is to try to determine if there is a way to predict dementia before the first signs are apparent.