Fintel Alliance starts planning its next-gen analytics hub

Australia's Fintel Alliance of banks, police and regulators is set to evolve its collaborative analytics hub so that it can scale up to meet expanded monitoring of financial crime.

The alliance brings together the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC), government and law enforcement agencies, and major banks, remittance service providers and gambling operators.

Increasingly underpinning its activity is a collaborative analytics hub (CAH) that, according to the alliance, “aims to speed up the analysis of financial data.”

The CAH saw its first use in 2024 via a project aimed at improving the “intelligence picture of money laundering across the four major Australian banks - Commonwealth Bank, ANZ, NAB and Westpac.”

It has since been used on other projects - notably one in mid-2025 “to analyse a large dataset of cash transactions shared under legislated provisions” that led to the discovery of “previously-hidden criminal patterns” and “rapid identification of criminal networks now subject to law enforcement action.”

Over the course of the 2024-5 financial year, the hub also transitioned from being “a proof-of-concept into a core function”, according to AUSTRAC’s annual report.

But it appears there are some shortcomings with the hub that make it ill-suited to the monitoring ambitions of the alliance.

“While [the hub] has validated the collaborative concept, it remains limited in scale, automation, and architectural maturity,” AUSTRAC said of the hub in a recent procurement notice.

This has led to the commencement of work “to establish a more formalised, scalable, and enduring intelligence capability” that will ultimately replace the hub in its current form.

“The CAH [presently] functions as a validated foundation and transition point between current state operations and the future operating model, providing the base capability from which the next generation platform architecture and operating model can be developed,” AUSTRAC said.

“The vision is to establish a unified intelligence platform that brings together data, analytics, and investigative tools in a coordinated and secure environment. 

“By enabling consistent data standards, shared analytics, and near real-time information exchange, the platform will produce more complete, actionable, and timely intelligence.”

It appears the alliance’s ambition is for an always-on and real-time analytics capability, rather than one that is suited only to use on a project-by-project basis.

The future analytics hub will enable “a shift from ad hoc collaboration toward a structured, sustainable, and technology-enabled intelligence capability,” AUSTRAC said.

“Through the collaborative analytics hub, we’ve been able to deliver richer intelligence and faster operational outcomes,” AUSTRAC’s Fintel Alliance national manager Jon Brewer said in a statement to iTnews. 

“The focus now is on building a scalable capability that can support this level of collaboration as the Fintel Alliance continues to grow.”

It’s not clear what data platforms and technologies the proof-of-concept or current CAH uses. An AUSTRAC spokesperson declined to comment.