New research has shined a light on economic abuse in Australian households.

RMIT University researchers have found that eleven per cent of Australians — both women and men — have suffered economic abuse from their partners.

‘Economic abuse’ is a situation where one partner in a relationship controls another's finances.

While commonplace and seemingly innocuous, this arrangement often leads to one partner becoming dependent on the other, opening up an avenue for distress and mistreatment.

Researchers looked at information from an Australian Bureau of Statistics survey of 17,000 Australians to find that nearly 16 per cent of women had a history of being economically abused, as well as 7 per cent of men.

Women with disabilities or long-term health problems are more likely to be victimised.

Lead researcher Jozicka Kutin told the ABC that the issue is often revealed when people visit the bank.

“Banks can be a safe place, for example, for women to go to resolve some of these issues,” she said.

“It's there that the worker can tease out that there's something wrong — ‘where is all your money going?'’ and that's when it often all comes out.”

But bankers and other workers often have no idea what to do next.

“That's the tricky part of it all. Because while people don't identify it as a form of domestic violence, they're not going to go to domestic violence services, they're not going to look up domestic violence websites or pages on financial abuse they won't recognise it as such,” she said.

“So it's really up to the skills of that financial adviser or housing worker or domestic violence worker to steer the person in the right way.”

The RMIT researchers are now looking into possible prevention and intervention strategies.