Financial Crime Data Visualization Tools Help Australia Combat Sophisticated Fraud Attacks
Australia’s financial institutions and law enforcement agencies are facing a staggering $47 billion in annual losses due to financial crime. To combat these sophisticated attacks, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX) is leveraging data visualization tools from Alteryx to uncover patterns and trends across the country.
The Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX)
The AFCX is a nonprofit organization established in 2016, which facilitates information sharing and collaboration among top financial providers and criminal investigators. Data analysts at AFCX and its member organizations rely on Alteryx to mine deep insights from a broad range of information sources, quickly turning results into action.
Unlocking Analytical Capabilities
“We can be much more flexible and adaptable in catering to the challenges of different organizations,” said David Pegley, Managing Director of AFCX. “We have dramatically increased our analytical capabilities to get more out of the data and manage it better.”
The AFCX shares information, analytic capabilities, and evidence-based insights among nearly 20 banking institutions and various government and police agencies. By working outside traditional industry and bureaucratic silos, the independent company serves as a channel for its members to identify criminal trends, activity, and networks across the financial sector.
From Project Management to Data Visualization
AFCX initially used a project management software application to crunch the streams of fraud-related data coming from its members. However, within a year or two, the team found themselves pushing against the tool’s analytical limitations.
“We needed a more flexible and scalable platform that allowed us to make changes quickly,” Pegley said. “That’s when we stepped into the world of Alteryx.”
The Benefits of Alteryx for AFCX
The AFCX qualified for reduced-cost licensing and technical support through the Alteryx for Good program, which supports nonprofit organizations in using analytics to advance their missions.
Launched in 2019, AFCX’s Alteryx platform has exceeded Pegley’s expectations for streamlining data management tasks while also enabling sophisticated analytics and multidimensional reporting. For example:
- Data processing steps that used to require several hours are now completed within a few minutes.
- The ease of updating workflow fields in Alteryx APA yielded a decisive advantage, helping one bank save millions of dollars by stopping fraud in just one month.
Impact on Financial Crime
The robust data intelligence channeled through AFCX is helping Australian banking institutions and law enforcement agencies more quickly locate and shut down many of the loopholes that cybercriminals exploit. In addition:
- The AFCX is helping financial institutions to reimburse their customers sooner for losses due to financial crime.
- The company is building workflows within Alteryx to enable the banks to file asset recovery requests with each other and automate the flow of funds from one bank to another.
Looking Ahead
Pegley and his AFCX colleagues see even more opportunities to leverage the analytical capabilities of Alteryx as the company looks to expand its work into areas such as money laundering and child exploitation.