A multicriteria approach to manage credit risk under strict uncertainty

[EN] Assessing the ability of applicants to repay their loans is generally recognized as a critical task in credit risk management. Credit managers rely on financial and market information, usually in the form of ratios, to estimate the quality of credit applicants. However, there is no guarantee that a given set of ratios contains the information needed for credit classification. Decision rules under strict uncertainty aim to mitigate this drawback. In this paper, we propose the use of a moderate pessimism decision rule combined with dimensionality reduction techniques and compromise programming. Moderate pessimism ensures that neither extreme optimistic nor pessimistic decisions are taken. Dimensionality reduction from a set of ratios facilitates the extraction of the relevant information. Compromise programming allows to find a balance between quality of debt and risk concentration. Our model produces two critical outputs: a quality assessment and the optimum allocation of funds. 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Evolutionary estimation of a Coupled Markov Chain credit risk model

There exists a range of different models for estimating and simulating credit risk transitions to optimally manage credit risk portfolios and products. In this chapter we present a Coupled Markov Chain approach to model rating transitions and thereby default probabilities of companies. As the likelihood of the model turns out to be a non-convex function of the parameters to be estimated, we apply heuristics to find the ML estimators. To this extent, we outline the model and its likelihood function, and present both a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm, as well as an Evolutionary Optimization algorithm to maximize the likelihood function. Numerical results are shown which suggest a further application of evolutionary optimization techniques for credit risk management