Financial distress prediction using the hybrid associative memory with translation

This paper presents an alternative technique for financial distress prediction systems. The method is based on a type of neural network, which is called hybrid associative memory with translation. While many different neural network architectures have successfully been used to predict credit risk and corporate failure, the power of associative memories for financial decision-making has not been explored in any depth as yet. The performance of the hybrid associative memory with translation is compared to four traditional neural networks, a support vector machine and a logistic regression model in terms of their prediction capabilities. The experimental results over nine real-life data sets show that the associative memory here proposed constitutes an appropriate solution for bankruptcy and credit risk prediction, performing significantly better than the rest of models under class imbalance and data overlapping conditions in terms of the true positive rate and the geometric mean of true positive and true negative rates.This work has partially been supported by the Mexican CONACYT through the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program [232167], the Spanish Ministry of Economy [TIN2013-46522-P], the Generalitat Valenciana [PROMETEOII/2014/062] and the Mexican PRODEP [DSA/103.5/15/7004]. We would like to thank the Reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions, which have helped to improve the quality of this paper substantially

Gene selection and disease prediction from gene expression data using a two-stage hetero-associative memory

In general, gene expression microarrays consist of a vast number of genes and very few samples, which represents a critical challenge for disease prediction and diagnosis. This paper develops a two-stage algorithm that integrates feature selection and prediction by extending a type of hetero-associative neural networks. In the first level, the algorithm generates the associative memory, whereas the second level picks the most relevant genes.With the purpose of illustrating the applicability and efficiency of the method proposed here, we use four different gene expression microarray databases and compare their classification performance against that of other renowned classifiers built on the whole (original) feature (gene) space. The experimental results show that the two-stage hetero-associative memory is quite competitive with standard classification models regarding the overall accuracy, sensitivity and specificity. In addition, it also produces a significant decrease in computational efforts and an increase in the biological interpretability of microarrays because worthless (irrelevant and/or redundant) genes are discarded

Analysis of FAM in satisfaction of inpatient services

Patients are the main object who must get the best service at a hospital, because the quality of hospital services determines the recovery of a patient and the quality of the hospital. The quality of hospital services has two components, namely the fulfillment of predetermined quality standards and the fulfillment of patient satisfaction. Hospitals must provide services that focus on patient satisfaction. Improving the quality of health services can be started by evaluating each element that plays a role in shaping patient satisfaction. The application of evaluation measures to patient care in each hospital is needed as an increase in the quality of service to patients. The analysis of the fuzzy associate memory method has the closeness of human reasoning to get solutions to various problems so that they are easy to apply and understand. Utilization of decision support system (DSS) analysis with fuzzy associate memory method can be used as an evaluation of the perception of each consumer complaint to measure the level of patient satisfaction

A PREDICTION MODEL OF COMPANY HEALTH USING BAGGING CLASSIFIER

In business, have many competitions between companies occur to obtain as many profits as possible, Financial Distress is a financial decline that occurs in companies, reflecting the health of the company before bankruptcy started. Therefore, to avoid bankruptcy, it requires a method or tool with high accuracy in identifying company health. This research uses a bagging classifier, which is one type of Ensemble Learning algorithm. To predict financial difficulties, the authors use the bagging classifier algorithm with 0.13% more accurate results than previous studies using the XGBoost algorithm

Praktična primjena CCB modela u Češkoj

This research aimed to present a new bankruptcy prediction model and apply this original prediction method in practice. The Come Clean Bankruptcy (or CCB) model uses relevant financial indicators and ratios to detect the signs of impending financial distress in time so that the management can take appropriate measures to avoid it. The model was applied to the data reported by 199 entities operating in the textile/clothing industry in the Czech Republic. Analyzing data reported for the previous seven years enabled us to predict which companies are more likely to end in a difficult financial situation. Afterward, comparing these predictions with the actual development of those companies in 2013-2020 serves to verify the efficacy and usability of the model to corporate reality. The research has shown that companies that went bankrupt in the analyzed period represented only a fraction of the data set (roughly 4.5%). Despite the small number of financial failures occurring during the analyzed period, the CCB model could detect impending bankruptcy in one-third of the cases.Cilj ovog istraživanja bio je predstaviti novi model predviđanja stečaja i potom ovu originalnu metodu predviđanja primijeniti u praksi. Model Come Clean Bankruptcy (ili CCB) koristi relevantne financijske pokazatelje i omjere kako bi na vrijeme utvrdio znakove nadolazećih financijskih problema tako da ih uprava može izbjeći poduzimanjem odgovarajućih mjera. Model je korišten na podacima za 199 subjekata koji posluju u tekstilnoj/odjevnoj industriji u Češkoj. Analizom tih podataka za sedam prethodnih godina moguće je predvidjeti za koje je tvrtke vjerojatnije da upadnu u tešku financijsku situaciju. Ta se predviđanja zatim uspoređuju sa stvarnim razvojem tih tvrtki u razdoblju 2013. – 2020. godine kako bi se provjerila učinkovitost i upotrebljivost modela u korporativnoj stvarnosti. Istraživanje je pokazalo da su poduzeća koja su u analiziranom razdoblju stvarno otišla u stečaj predstavljala samo djelić skupa podataka (otprilike 4,5 %). Unatoč malom broju financijskih pogrešaka koje su se dogodile tijekom analiziranog razdoblja, model CCB-a je u trećini slučajeva uspio detektirati nadolazeći stečaj

Uso de variables de mercado en la predicción de dificultades financieras para las empresas que cotizan en Vietnam

This paper aims to investigate the classification power of market variables as predictors in the financial distress prediction model for listed companies in a frontier market as Vietnam securities market. Data is collected from 70 financially distressed companies that suffer a loss in 3 consecutive years and 156 non-financially distressed companies in Vietnam from 2010 to 2017. Four different models have been constructed using Logit regression and SVM analysis technique to make a prediction in 1 to 3-year ahead. The analysis results show that combining accounting ratios with market variables such as price volatility and P/E can improve the classification ability of the ex-ante model. In addition, contrary to the results of related previous researches in emerging markets, in this study, Logit models outperform SVM models. Therefore, for future research, models that apply other machine learning classifiers such as Decision Tree (DT) or Neural Network (NN) should be investigated.Este artículo tiene como objetivo investigar el poder de clasificación de las variables del mercado como factores predictivos en el modelo de predicción de dificultades financieras para las empresas que cotizan en bolsa en un mercado fronterizo como el mercado de valores de Vietnam. Los datos se recopilan de 70 compañías con dificultades financieras que sufrieron una pérdida en 3 años consecutivos y 156 empresas sin dificultades financieras en Vietnam desde 2010 a 2017. Se han construido cuatro modelos diferentes utilizando regresión Logit y la técnica de análisis de SVM para hacer una predicción en 1 a 3 años por delante. Los resultados del análisis muestran que la combinación de ratios contables con variables de mercado como la volatilidad de los precios y el P / E puede mejorar la capacidad de clasificación del modelo ex ante. Además, a diferencia de los resultados de investigaciones anteriores relacionadas en mercados emergentes, en este estudio, los modelos Logit superan a los modelos SVM. Por lo tanto, para futuras investigaciones, se deben investigar los modelos que aplican otros clasificadores de aprendizaje automático, como el Árbol de decisiones (DT) o la Red neuronal (NN)

Data Science for Finance: Targeted Learning from (Big) Data to Economic Stability and Financial Risk Management

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Information Management, specialization in Statistics and EconometricsThe modelling, measurement, and management of systemic financial stability remains a critical issue in most countries. Policymakers, regulators, and managers depend on complex models for financial stability and risk management. The models are compelled to be robust, realistic, and consistent with all relevant available data. This requires great data disclosure, which is deemed to have the highest quality standards. However, stressed situations, financial crises, and pandemics are the source of many new risks with new requirements such as new data sources and different models. This dissertation aims to show the data quality challenges of high-risk situations such as pandemics or economic crisis and it try to theorize the new machine learning models for predictive and longitudes time series models. In the first study (Chapter Two) we analyzed and compared the quality of official datasets available for COVID-19 as a best practice for a recent high-risk situation with dramatic effects on financial stability. We used comparative statistical analysis to evaluate the accuracy of data collection by a national (Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention) and two international (World Health Organization; European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) organizations based on the value of systematic measurement errors. We combined excel files, text mining techniques, and manual data entries to extract the COVID-19 data from official reports and to generate an accurate profile for comparisons. The findings show noticeable and increasing measurement errors in the three datasets as the pandemic outbreak expanded and more countries contributed data for the official repositories, raising data comparability concerns and pointing to the need for better coordination and harmonized statistical methods. The study offers a COVID-19 combined dataset and dashboard with minimum systematic measurement errors and valuable insights into the potential problems in using databanks without carefully examining the metadata and additional documentation that describe the overall context of data. In the second study (Chapter Three) we discussed credit risk as the most significant source of risk in banking as one of the most important sectors of financial institutions. We proposed a new machine learning approach for online credit scoring which is enough conservative and robust for unstable and high-risk situations. This Chapter is aimed at the case of credit scoring in risk management and presents a novel method to be used for the default prediction of high-risk branches or customers. This study uses the Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric statistic to form a conservative credit-scoring model and to study its impact on modeling performance on the benefit of the credit provider. The findings show that the new credit scoring methodology represents a reasonable coefficient of determination and a very low false-negative rate. It is computationally less expensive with high accuracy with around 18% improvement in Recall/Sensitivity. Because of the recent perspective of continued credit/behavior scoring, our study suggests using this credit score for non-traditional data sources for online loan providers to allow them to study and reveal changes in client behavior over time and choose the reliable unbanked customers, based on their application data. This is the first study that develops an online non-parametric credit scoring system, which can reselect effective features automatically for continued credit evaluation and weigh them out by their level of contribution with a good diagnostic ability. In the third study (Chapter Four) we focus on the financial stability challenges faced by insurance companies and pension schemes when managing systematic (undiversifiable) mortality and longevity risk. For this purpose, we first developed a new ensemble learning strategy for panel time-series forecasting and studied its applications to tracking respiratory disease excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. The layered learning approach is a solution related to ensemble learning to address a given predictive task by different predictive models when direct mapping from inputs to outputs is not accurate. We adopt a layered learning approach to an ensemble learning strategy to solve the predictive tasks with improved predictive performance and take advantage of multiple learning processes into an ensemble model. In this proposed strategy, the appropriate holdout for each model is specified individually. Additionally, the models in the ensemble are selected by a proposed selection approach to be combined dynamically based on their predictive performance. It provides a high-performance ensemble model to automatically cope with the different kinds of time series for each panel member. For the experimental section, we studied more than twelve thousand observations in a portfolio of 61-time series (countries) of reported respiratory disease deaths with monthly sampling frequency to show the amount of improvement in predictive performance. We then compare each country’s forecasts of respiratory disease deaths generated by our model with the corresponding COVID-19 deaths in 2020. The results of this large set of experiments show that the accuracy of the ensemble model is improved noticeably by using different holdouts for different contributed time series methods based on the proposed model selection method. These improved time series models provide us proper forecasting of respiratory disease deaths for each country, exhibiting high correlation (0.94) with Covid-19 deaths in 2020. In the fourth study (Chapter Five) we used the new ensemble learning approach for time series modeling, discussed in the previous Chapter, accompany by K-means clustering for forecasting life tables in COVID-19 times. Stochastic mortality modeling plays a critical role in public pension design, population and public health projections, and in the design, pricing, and risk management of life insurance contracts and longevity-linked securities. There is no general method to forecast the mortality rate applicable to all situations especially for unusual years such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In this Chapter, we investigate the feasibility of using an ensemble of traditional and machine learning time series methods to empower forecasts of age-specific mortality rates for groups of countries that share common longevity trends. We use Generalized Age-Period-Cohort stochastic mortality models to capture age and period effects, apply K-means clustering to time series to group countries following common longevity trends, and use ensemble learning to forecast life expectancy and annuity prices by age and sex. To calibrate models, we use data for 14 European countries from 1960 to 2018. The results show that the ensemble method presents the best robust results overall with minimum RMSE in the presence of structural changes in the shape of time series at the time of COVID-19. In this dissertation’s conclusions (Chapter Six), we provide more detailed insights about the overall contributions of this dissertation on the financial stability and risk management by data science, opportunities, limitations, and avenues for future research about the application of data science in finance and economy

Financial Distress, Prediction, and Strategies by Firms: A Systematic Review of Literature

The paper is systematic scrutiny of studies on financial distress, prediction, and strategies firms adapt to deal with the difficulty. To this end, the paper offers a dissection and assortment of 72 articles published between 2005 and 2017 in Scopus, Web of Science, and Science Direct. The authors chose the three databases as articles that are published only in indexed journals. The studies were selected based on the key terms "financial distress", "financial strategies", "financial distress prediction", and "financial distress strategies". The selected articles were evaluated based on seven categories: content, methodology, scope, and data analysis techniques, study period, study focus, and data analyzed. The evaluation and assortment of studies identified existing disparities in the literature on financial distress, offering opportunities for future researchers. Exceptional articles on financial challenges, prediction, and strategies adopted by firms were identified. The study finds that most of the studies centered on mature economies, whereas those on emerging markets-focused only on Asian markets. Equally, there are very few qualitative studies on the subject matter. Through the study, the authors paint a picture of existing literature on the subject matter; further, the authors expect the review to stimulate debate and further research among scholars

Dual Banking System Stability Index in the Shadow of COVID-19 Pandemic

The financial system is categorized as stable if there is no excessive volatility from financial pressures or crises. The IMF indicates that the crisis is not only related to one element but more than two or three elements of the crisis. The banking system's stability is measured by the banking stability index, gauging the effectiveness of monetary policy and financial risk. This study aims to measure the stability of the Indonesian banking system in the dual banking system model. The indicator to measure banking stability used the Z-score statistic based on fluctuations of Return on Assets for each type of bank. The Markov Switching Vector Autoregressive (MSVAR) model method was used to analyze the volatility of banking stability. Independent variables used included credit risk (NPL), Loan to Deposit Ratio, Liquidity Risk, Net Interest Margin, Capital Adequacy Ratio, Money Market Rate, Inflation, Gross Domestic Product, Federal Reserve rate, and Exchange Rate. The results of the regime switch analysis concluded that Indonesia's banking stability experienced a structural break due to the effects of the pandemic in April 2020. Based on the average Z-score value, the Islamic banking stability index was higher than conventional banking. In other words, Islamic banking was more stable than the conventional banking system. The Islamic banking stability index (iZscore) was significantly influenced by the level of Net Operating Margin, Financing to deposit ratio, Potential Loss Profit Sharing, Islamic Money Market Rate, and Exchange Rate. However, non-performing financing did not affect Islamic banking stability since the profit-sharing system implemented by Islamic banking stability was more influenced by the ratio of potential loss and profit-sharing system

Feature selection methods and sampling techniques to financial distress prediction for Vietnamese listed companies

The research is taken to integrate the effects of variable selection approaches, as well as sampling techniques, to the performance of a model to predict the financial distress for companies whose stocks are traded on securities exchanges of Vietnam. A firm is financially distressed when its stocks are delisted as requirement from Vietnam Stock Exchange because of making a loss in 3 consecutive years or having accumulated a loss greater than the company’s equity. There are 12 models, constructed differently in feature selection methods, sampling techniques, and classifiers. The feature selection methods are factor analysis and F-score selection, while 3 sets of data samples are chosen by choice-based method with different percentages of financially distressed firms. In terms of classifying technique, logistic regression together with SVM are used in these models. Data are collected from listed firms in Vietnam from 2009 to 2017 for 1, 2 and 3 years before the announcement of their delisting requirement. The experiment’s results highlight the outperformance of the SVM model with F-score selection method in a data sample containing the highest percentage of non-financially distressed firms