How the Ironbark Trust Score is built.
A composite 1–100 score per Australian Business Number, computed from six published sub-scores. The weights are fixed and disclosed. The data sources are named. Every field carries a last-refreshed timestamp.
Why we publish this
Compliance buyers — lawyers, accountants, real estate principals — are professionally accountable for the screening decisions they sign off on. They cannot defend a decision made against an opaque score. They can defend a decision made against a published methodology with disclosed sources and weights. Publishing the methodology is the minimum bar for a tool that any AUSTRAC reporting entity should adopt. Most of our competitors do not clear it. We do.
The six sub-scores
| Sub-score | Weight |
|---|---|
| Registration validity | 20 |
| Directorship | 15 |
| AUSTRAC flags | 20 |
| Sanctions / PEP | 15 |
| Court & insolvency | 15 |
| Freshness & data integrity | 15 |
| Total | 100 |
Each sub-score in detail
Registration validity
weight 20 / 100- Data source
- ABR (Australian Business Register)
- Refresh cadence
- Daily
- What it covers
- ABN active status, GST registration, entity type sanity check (sole trader vs company vs trust), and incorporation date.
- Edge cases
- Recently-cancelled ABNs flagged for 30 days; suspended GST registration noted but not penalised if otherwise current.
Directorship
weight 15 / 100- Data source
- ASIC company register, banned & disqualified persons register
- Refresh cadence
- Weekly
- What it covers
- Current directors, historical directorships, cross-director networks, intersection with the ASIC banned/disqualified register.
- Edge cases
- Common-name false positives are filtered using DOB + ABN context where ASIC publishes them. Where it does not, we surface the match and require user confirmation.
AUSTRAC flags
weight 20 / 100- Data source
- AUSTRAC reporting entity register, enforcement actions register
- Refresh cadence
- Weekly
- What it covers
- Whether the entity is a registered reporting entity, Tranche 2 applicability flag, and any AUSTRAC enforcement action history.
- Edge cases
- Tranche 2 applicability is computed from ANZSIC code + entity type, not declared by the entity. Errors are corrected via per-entity feedback.
Sanctions / PEP
weight 15 / 100- Data source
- DFAT consolidated list, UN Security Council list, OFAC SDN list
- Refresh cadence
- Daily
- What it covers
- Direct and indirect intersection with three sanctions lists, plus public PEP indicators where lawful to surface.
- Edge cases
- Name-only matches are flagged as 'screen' not 'hit'. Confirmed matches require a second source. PEP coverage is current government office holders only — historical PEP coverage ships in Phase 2.
Court & insolvency
weight 15 / 100- Data source
- AFSA (personal insolvency), ASIC insolvency register, Federal Court of Australia
- Refresh cadence
- Weekly
- What it covers
- Bankruptcy and personal insolvency events, company external administration history, public Federal Court matters.
- Edge cases
- State court matters are out of scope for v1.0. Discharged bankruptcies older than 7 years are noted but do not affect the score.
Freshness & data integrity
weight 15 / 100- Data source
- Per-source last-refresh metadata, internal conflict detector
- Refresh cadence
- Continuous
- What it covers
- Per-field last-refreshed timestamp, count of unresolved conflicts between sources, and a stale-data penalty for any source older than its target refresh cadence.
- Edge cases
- If any sub-score's underlying source is more than 14 days stale, the composite score is suppressed and the report shows 'data refresh in progress'.
Score bands
The composite score maps to one of three bands. Bands are derived from the composite with one override — the band-cap rule — documented below.
Low risk indicators. Public-register evidence supports proceeding with ordinary customer due diligence.
Review recommended. Contributing risks are surfaced in the report; enhanced due diligence may be warranted.
Escalate. All contributing risks are surfaced. Enhanced due diligence or a reporting-entity obligation may apply.
Band-cap rule (v1.1)
If any non-freshness sub-score terminates at 0 — for example, a sanctions hit, an active AUSTRAC enforcement listing, a current external administration, a disqualified director, or a cancelled ABR status — the band is capped at AMBER even if the composite score otherwise lands in the GREEN range. The composite number itself is not altered; only the band classification is capped.
Freshness terminal-zeros (stale data) are not caught by this rule. Stale data is a data-quality signal, not a risk-severity signal — it deducts from the composite via the freshness sub-score but does not escalate the band.
This rule was introduced at v1.1 and applies to every Trust Score rendered from that version forward. See the change log for the rationale and the version history.
What this score is not
- Not legal advice. The score does not substitute for the judgement of an admitted legal practitioner.
- Not a lending decision. The score is not a credit assessment, credit rating, or recommendation to extend credit.
- Not an AUSTRAC regulatory determination. Only AUSTRAC determines reporting-entity status, enforcement outcomes, and Tranche 2 applicability in any binding sense.
- Not a guarantee. The score is computed from publicly available registers. Errors, omissions, and stale data in those registers will flow through to the score.