Industry sources say many of the names landing on these internal lists are brokers of Chinese background, triggering unease in parts of the sector.
Information feeding the lists comes through the Fintel Alliance, a finance industry working group led by Austrac that pools intelligence from banks, regulators and law enforcement agencies.
Lenders are being informally urged to avoid dealing with certain Chinese brokers while investigators try to isolate those linked to suspect home-loan files.
The focus is on mortgage applications that sailed through approval after lending teams received documents that later appeared to be fabricated.
Behind the scenes, banks are examining deals where brokers supplied income and identity documents believed to have been created using artificial intelligence tools rather than genuine records.
The concern is not just simple forgery but the ability of AI to generate highly convincing payslips, bank statements and supporting paperwork that can slip past frontline checks.
According to people familiar with the review, Australia’s major lenders may have already advanced up to $3bn against these potentially compromised mortgage applications.
That figure covers loans where brokers acted as the conduit for documents now under suspicion, rather than files submitted directly by borrowers.
Investigators are trying to trace patterns across lenders, brokers and specific documentation styles to pinpoint the networks involved.
