Fintel Alliance’s Collaborative Analytics Hub aims to speed up the analysis of financial data, strengthen industry controls and support law enforcement.   

Late last year Fintel Alliance members came together in Sydney and Melbourne to collaborate on the Collaborative Analytics Hub’s first project. The project aimed to improve our intelligence picture of money laundering across the four major Australian banks – Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, NAB and Westpac.

How it worked   

Under notice, Fintel Alliance collected a dataset of over-the-counter and ATM cash deposits from the banks. In a first for AUSTRAC, the banks transferred files to AUSTRAC through a secure, shared digital channel.

“This was a quicker and more streamlined way of moving large datasets than on previous projects,” said AUSTRAC Deputy CEO Intelligence Dr John Moss.  

Once collected, AUSTRAC trialled commercial software with flexible and powerful capabilities to transform the massive dataset into visually engaging dashboards and models for analysis.   

Drilling down on clusters of unusual deposit activity, AUSTRAC and the banks made further enquiries and shared their insights with each other to enrich the intelligence picture.

“One such cluster resulted in the identification of a person of interest, whom we’ve since referred to law enforcement, who acted upon the referral within 24 hours” Dr Moss said.   

A valuable tool 

“The combined datasets and new software help us see things that were not immediately visible through our standard collection processes, or to any one industry partner.”  

Dr Moss added that banking partners and law enforcement had positive feedback on the data analytics and dashboards developed.   

“They’re a valuable tool to provide strategic and tactical insights on a range of areas for financial crime.”   

AUSTRAC’s Intelligence Analytics team led the design and build of the dashboards, with support from data science experts from participating Fintel Alliance financial industry members. Their work included design workshops with specialists from the banks’ financial crime teams, to ensure they targeted the right data points.  

Three types of dashboards were designed: 

1. summary: providing a high-level overview of cash activity 
2. intelligence: giving an in-depth view of a particular theme, for example the use of different technologies to authenticate deposits across multiple banks 
3. drill-through: providing transaction and location information for a specific customer, depositor or deposit location. 

Fintel Alliance will continue identifying more projects for the Collaborative Analytics Hub to help fight financial crimes and protect the community by drawing on data and our members’ expertise.