Multiple classifier architectures and their application to credit risk assessment

Multiple classifier systems combine several individual classifiers to deliver a final classification decision. An increasingly controversial question is whether such systems can outperform the single best classifier and if so, what form of multiple classifier system yields the greatest benefit. In this paper the performance of several multiple classifier systems are evaluated in terms of their ability to correctly classify consumers as good or bad credit risks. Empirical results suggest that many, but not all, multiple classifier systems deliver significantly better performance than the single best classifier. Overall, bagging and boosting outperform other multi-classifier systems, and a new boosting algorithm, Error Trimmed Boosting, outperforms bagging and AdaBoost by a significant margin

An Overview of the Use of Neural Networks for Data Mining Tasks

In the recent years the area of data mining has experienced a considerable demand for technologies that extract knowledge from large and complex data sources. There is a substantial commercial interest as well as research investigations in the area that aim to develop new and improved approaches for extracting information, relationships, and patterns from datasets. Artificial Neural Networks (NN) are popular biologically inspired intelligent methodologies, whose classification, prediction and pattern recognition capabilities have been utilised successfully in many areas, including science, engineering, medicine, business, banking, telecommunication, and many other fields. This paper highlights from a data mining perspective the implementation of NN, using supervised and unsupervised learning, for pattern recognition, classification, prediction and cluster analysis, and focuses the discussion on their usage in bioinformatics and financial data analysis tasks

Credit risk modeling: A comparative analysis of artificial and deep neural networks

Credit risk assessment plays a major role in the banks and financial institutions to prevent counterparty risk failure. One of the primary capabilities of a robust risk management system must be detecting the risks earlier, though many of the bank systems today lack this key capability which leads to further losses (MGI, 2017). In searching for an improved methodology to detect such credit risk and increasing the lacking capabilities earlier, a comparative analysis between Deep Neural Network (DNN) and machine learning techniques such as Support Vector Machines (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN) were conducted. The Deep Neural Network used in this study consists of six layers of neurons. Further, sampling techniques such as SMOTE, SVM-SMOTE, RUS, and All-KNN to make the imbalanced dataset a balanced one were also applied. Using supervised learning techniques, the proposed DNN model was able to achieve an accuracy of 82.18% with a ROC score of 0.706 using the RUS sampling technique. The All KNN sampling technique was capable of achieving the maximum true positives in two different models. Using the proposed approach, banks and credit check institutions can help prevent major losses occurring due to counterparty risk failure.credit riskdeep neural networkartificial neural networksupport vector machinessampling technique

Autoencoders for strategic decision support

In the majority of executive domains, a notion of normality is involved in most strategic decisions. However, few data-driven tools that support strategic decision-making are available. We introduce and extend the use of autoencoders to provide strategically relevant granular feedback. A first experiment indicates that experts are inconsistent in their decision making, highlighting the need for strategic decision support. Furthermore, using two large industry-provided human resources datasets, the proposed solution is evaluated in terms of ranking accuracy, synergy with human experts, and dimension-level feedback. This three-point scheme is validated using (a) synthetic data, (b) the perspective of data quality, (c) blind expert validation, and (d) transparent expert evaluation. Our study confirms several principal weaknesses of human decision-making and stresses the importance of synergy between a model and humans. Moreover, unsupervised learning and in particular the autoencoder are shown to be valuable tools for strategic decision-making