Modeling credit scoring using neural network ensembles

Purpose – Credit scoring is important for financial institutions in order to accurately predict the likelihood of business failure. Related studies have shown that machine learning techniques, such as neural networks, outperform many statistical approaches to solving this type of problem, and advanced machine learning techniques, such as classifier ensembles and hybrid classifiers, provide better prediction performance than single machine learning based classification techniques. However, it is not known which type of advanced classification technique performs better in terms of financial distress prediction. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – This paper compares neural network ensembles and hybrid neural networks over three benchmarking credit scoring related data sets, which are Australian, German, and Japanese data sets. Findings – The experimental results show that hybrid neural networks and neural network ensembles outperform the single neural network. Although hybr...

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