AUSTRAC commits to expanding analytics hub as core priority

Australia’s financial crimes investigator and intelligence organisation AUSTRAC has vowed to expand its collaborative data analytics hub, making it a “central function” of its financial crimes fight.

AUSTRAC has hailed the success of the Fintel Alliance, the public-private financial data sharing cooperative which it oversees, declaring its intention to build out the alliance’s real-time data analytics hub.

Launched in 2017, the Fintel Alliance is a collaborative intelligence-sharing partnership between Australia’s major banks, remittance service providers and gambling operators, alongside law enforcement and security agencies in Australia and overseas.

AUSTRAC chief executive Brendan Thomas hailed the success of the data-sharing collective in effectively “pooling data, sharing insights, and targeting major threats to strengthen financial systems and law enforcement action”.

“This [partnership] has generated real intelligence across a range of serious crimes including money laundering, child sexual exploitation, domestic violence, tax evasion, fraud and illegal phoenixing.”

Thomas singled out the successful rollout of Fintel’s data analytics platform, designed to identify criminal patterns and trends across the financial sector.

The platform examined criminal patterns from cash deposits (under $10,000) transacted by the big four banks (CBA, Westpac, NAB and ANZ), with more than 50 million data points examined.

“Using the combined datasets, new software, and with our analysts and bank analysts working together in the same room, we were able to see things that were not visible before. In just a few days we identified major criminal networks now subject to law enforcement action. This shows the power of intelligence partnerships and collective effort.”

Fintel Alliance Executive Board co-chair and ANZ group head of financial crime risk, Cassandra Hewett, welcomed the expanded capacity to develop the platform’s tools and “drive real-time responses, together”.

She said the hub has enabled Fintel Alliance members to connect to data “in ways that weren’t previously possible, providing real-time responses to criminal behaviour on already more than one occasion”.

Alongside the expansion of the data hub, AUSTRAC will also commit to a resource boost to the Fintel Alliance, which it says will lay the groundwork for partnerships with Tranche 2 entities.

As part of the expansion, a seconded senior manager from ANZ Bank will help co-lead and build new pairings with industry and government members.

Recent successes

AUSTRAC singled out a number of successful Alliance initiatives that have helped to fill gaps in its financial crimes identification and regulation.

The Fintel Alliance, it noted, produced a threat alert on money muling behaviour and identified an increase in micro-laundering, a process where funds are co-mingled with legitimate and illicit sources and moved at volume through low-value digital transfers.

The Alliance also launched a campaign on ‘scambling’, a practice where unlicensed online gambling platforms advertise on social media and trick people to visit a scam website to participate in gambling.