Are you a good borrower? Mining interpretable pattern structures in credit scoring

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to show that closure-based classification and regression models provide both high accuracy and interpretability. Design/methodology/approach Pattern structures allow one to approach the knowledge extraction problem in case of partially ordered descriptions. They provide a way to apply techniques based on closed descriptions to non-binary data. To provide scalability of the approach, the author introduced a lazy (query-based) classification algorithm. Findings The experiments support the hypothesis that closure-based classification and regression allow one to both achieve higher accuracy in scoring models as compared to results obtained with classical banking models and retain interpretability of model results, whereas black-box methods grant better accuracy for the cost of losing interpretability. Originality/value This is an original research showing the advantage of closure-based classification and regression models in the banking sphere.