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Summary
Australia Post implemented new anti-money laundering systems and controls as part of its evolution from traditional postal services to digital banking and financial services. It deployed the Napier AI Continuum platform in the Microsoft Azure cloud, integrating advanced transaction monitoring, client screening, and behavioural analytics across the organisation. The business results included reducing false positives by over 50% and increasing accurate unusual activity detection by 135%. The societal impact included providing suspicious activity information that helped dismantle a cross-country money laundering syndicate.
"As part of our plan to modernise for a better future and Post26 strategy, scalable AML technology from Napier AI enables us to deliver better outcomes for customers, as the crucial link between digital stores and people. The key is the usability of Napier AI system, which enables us to adapt to emerging risks with a single view of the customer and configurable dashboards for an excellent view of key screening and monitoring activity."
Ben Mitchell, Senior Manager Financial Crime, Australia Post.
Challenge
Australia Post is Australia’s leading postal, logistics and integrated services organisation. The business’ origin stretches back more than 200 years to the appointment of Isaac Nichols as the first postmaster for the colony of New South Wales, and his opening of the first post office at his home in Sydney in 1809. To deliver much more than parcels and letters and to help build a sustainable business well into the future, Australia Post expanded to also offering financial services for businesses and government.
Australia Post’s services include paying bills and sending payments in-branch, and online via its app, as well as money transfer, insurance and identity services. Australia Post also delivered 2.3 billion items around the country in the last financial year. This vast scale of operations represented a significant challenge in screening and monitoring the complex threat landscape.
Solution
Australia Post selected Transaction Monitoring, Transaction Screening and Client Screening solutions from the cloud-native Napier AI Continuum platform. To support the growth of its digital banking services and the growing list of financial institution partners, the solution was deployed in the Microsoft Azure cloud environment. This allows Australia Post to quickly integrate with new partners, and configure screening and monitoring parameters to align to changes both internal (e.g. risk appetite) and external (e.g. new typologies).
By unifying risk monitoring applications, tools, and data into one environment, Napier AI Continuum meets Australia Post’s need for a singular view of risk across all its financial services products. The platform offers full financial crime risk management across the entire customer and transaction lifecycle from the start of a relationship, throughout ongoing reviews to regulatory reporting, in a no-code environment. The sandbox feature in Napier AI’s solutions enable even non-technical team members to test rules before making changes to the live environment and calibrate rules to a high degree against scenario thresholds.
Napier AI’s name matching engine was configured to align with Australia Post’s risk-based assessment, applying specific rules to accurately monitor and manage AML risks in line with the overall appetite.The name matching engine in Client Screening uses AI-driven fuzzy matching, which accommodates transliteration, phonetics, and variations in nicknames and spelling for enhanced detection accuracy and reduced false positives. Australia Post’s services include paying bills and sending payments in-branch, and online via its app, as well as money transfer, insurance and identity services. AustraliaPost also delivered 2.3 billion items around the country in the last financial year. This vast scale of operations represented a significant challenge in screening and monitoring the complex threat landscape.
Results
42%
reductions in alerts for manual review
Operational efficiency has seen notable gains, with a 42% reduction in the number of customer screening hits requiring manual review. This reduction has saved valuable time and resources, allowing the compliance team to manage a higher volume of cases and focus on investigating genuinely high-risk activity.
The enhanced user interface with priority filters, supports bulk operations and keyboard shortcuts collate investigation information to conduct reviews. This intuitive approach allows Australia Post to easily onboard new staff to the system within a week.
50%
Halved false positive rates and increased unusual activity detection
The result for Australia Post’s end customers is improved customer experience, as the more than halved false positive rates and increased unusual activity detection by 135% means customers are less likely to face delays or inconveniences caused by false alarms on their legitimate transactions.
Dismantling of a criminal syndicate using the Sandbox
Australia Post always knew that the ability to test new rules was crucial for its team, and with the scale of its operations, it was vital for this to be executed in near real-time. Napier AI’s sandbox and low-code capabilities have been a key driver in overcoming legacy manual processes and increasing the number of cases raised each month by 190%. Australia Post analysts began to identify an increase in activity in Western Sydney of young people regularly sending large sums of money in dollars to Pakistan. As suspicions grew, analysts were able to use the sandboxing capabilities within the Napier AI platform to define rules for examining all large cash transfers by individuals within a given range from this area to Pakistan. After examining the case in detail, it was clear to see the suspicious nature of these cross-border transactions. Working closely with a law enforcement strike force, analysts used the Napier AI platform to track both these individuals and the flow of money daily, providing real-time information on the actions of this criminal syndicate. The investigation was complicated by the use of sophisticated fake identity documents, allowing the criminals to change names frequently. This would have made the evidence trail impossible to follow without the flexibility to self-define rule sets aimed at tackling specific financial crime typologies within Napier AI’s platform.
