Modeling consumer loan default prediction using ensemble neural networks

Abstract

In this paper, a loan default prediction model is constricted using three different training algorithms, to train a supervised two-layer feed-forward network to produce the prediction model. But first, two attribute filtering functions were used, resulting in two data sets with reduced attributes and the original data-set. Back propagation based learning algorithms was used for training the network. The neural networks are trained using real world credit application cases from a German bank datasets which has 1000 cases; each case with 24 numerical attributes; upon, which the decision is based. The aim of this paper was to compare between the resulting models produced from using different training algorithms, scaled conjugate gradient backpropagation, Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm, One-step secant backpropagation (SCG, LM and OSS) and an ensemble of SCG, LM and OSS. Empirical results indicate that training algorithms improve the design of a loan default prediction model and ensemble model works better than the individual models.