Optimization of Multiclass Support Vector Machine using Genetic Algorithm: Application to the Prediction of Corporate Credit Rating

유전자 알고리즘을 이용한 다분류 SVM의 최적화: 기업신용등급 예측에의 응용

Corporate credit rating assessment consists of complicated processes in which various factors describing a company are taken into consideration. Such assessment is known to be very expensive since domain experts should be employed to assess the ratings. As a result, the data-driven corporate credit rating prediction using statistical and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques has received considerable attention from researchers and practitioners. In particular, statistical methods such as multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) and multinomial logistic regression analysis (MLOGIT), and AI methods including case-based reasoning (CBR), artificial neural network (ANN), and multiclass support vector machine (MSVM) have been applied to corporate credit rating.2) Among them, MSVM has recently become popular because of its robustness and high prediction accuracy. In this study, we propose a novel optimized MSVM model, and appy it to corporate credit rating prediction in order to enhance the accuracy. Our model, named 'GAMSVM (Genetic Algorithm-optimized Multiclass Support Vector Machine),' is designed to simultaneously optimize the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection. Prior studies like Lorena and de Carvalho (2008), and Chatterjee (2013) show that proper kernel parameters may improve the performance of MSVMs. Also, the results from the studies such as Shieh and Yang (2008) and Chatterjee (2013) imply that appropriate feature selection may lead to higher prediction accuracy. Based on these prior studies, we propose to apply GAMSVM to corporate credit rating prediction. As a tool for optimizing the kernel parameters and the feature subset selection, we suggest genetic algorithm (GA). GA is known as an efficient and effective search method that attempts to simulate the biological evolution phenomenon. By applying genetic operations such as selection, crossover, and mutation, it is designed to gradually improve the search results. Especially, mutation operator prevents GA from falling into the local optima, thus we can find the globally optimal or near-optimal solution using it. GA has popularly been applied to search optimal parameters or feature subset selections of AI techniques including MSVM. With these reasons, we also adopt GA as an optimization tool. To empirically validate the usefulness of GAMSVM, we applied it to a real-world case of credit rating in Korea. Our application is in bond rating, which is the most frequently studied area of credit rating for specific debt issues or other financial obligations. The experimental dataset was collected from a large credit rating company in South Korea. It contained 39 financial ratios of 1,295 companies in the manufacturing industry, and their credit ratings. Using various statistical methods including the one-way ANOVA and the stepwise MDA, we selected 14 financial ratios as the candidate independent variables. The dependent variable, i.e. credit rating, was labeled as four classes: 1(A1); 2(A2); 3(A3); 4(B and C). 80 percent of total data for each class was used for training, and remaining 20 percent was used for validation. And, to overcome small sample size, we applied five-fold cross validation to our dataset. In order to examine the competitiveness of the proposed model, we also experimented several comparative models including MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, ANN and MSVM. In case of MSVM, we adopted One-Against-One (OAO) and DAGSVM (Directed Acyclic Graph SVM) approaches because they are known to be the most accurate approaches among various MSVM approaches. GAMSVM was implemented using LIBSVM-an open-source software, and Evolver 5.5-a commercial software enables GA. Other comparative models were experimented using various statistical and AI packages such as SPSS for Windows, Neuroshell, and Microsoft Excel VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). Experimental results showed that the proposed model-GAMSVM-outperformed all the competitive models. In addition, the model was found to use less independent variables, but to show higher accuracy. In our experiments, five variables such as X7 (total debt), X9 (sales per employee), X13 (years after founded), X15 (accumulated earning to total asset), and X39 (the index related to the cash flows from operating activity) were found to be the most important factors in predicting the corporate credit ratings. However, the values of the finally selected kernel parameters were found to be almost same among the data subsets. To examine whether the predictive performance of GAMSVM was significantly greater than those of other models, we used the McNemar test. As a result, we found that GAMSVM was better than MDA, MLOGIT, CBR, and ANN at the 1% significance level, and better than OAO and DAGSVM at the 5% significance level.

기업신용등급은 금융시장의 신뢰를 구축하고 거래를 활성화하는데 있어 매우 중요한 요소로서, 오래 전부터 학계에서는 보다 정확한 기업신용등급 예측을 가능케 하는 다양한 모형들을 연구해 왔다. 구체적으로 다중판별분석(Multiple Discriminant Analysis, MDA)이나 다항 로지스틱 회귀분석(multinomial logistic regression analysis, MLOGIT)과 같은 통계기법을 비롯해, 인공신경망(Artificial Neural Networks, ANN), 사례기반추론(Case-based Reasoning, CBR), 그리고 다분류 문제해결을 위해 확장된 다분류 Support Vector Machines(Multiclass SVM)에 이르기까지 다양한 기법들이 학자들에 의해 적용되었는데, 최근의 연구결과들에 따르면 이 중에서도 다분류 SVM이 가장 우수한 예측성과를 보이고 있는 것으로 보고되고 있다. 본 연구에서는 이러한 다분류 SVM의 성능을 한 단계 더 개선하기 위한 대안으로 유전자 알고리즘(GA, Genetic Algorithm)을 활용한 최적화 모형을 제안한다. 구체적으로 본 연구의 제안모형은 유전자 알고리즘을 활용해 다분류 SVM에 적용되어야 할 최적의 커널 함수 파라미터값들과 최적의 입력변수 집합(feature subset)을 탐색하도록 설계되었다. 실제 데이터셋을 활용해 제안모형을 적용해 본 결과, MDA나 MLOGIT, CBR, ANN과 같은 기존 인공지능/데이터마이닝 기법들은 물론 지금까지 가장 우수한 예측성과를 보이는 것으로 알려져 있던 전통적인 다분류 SVM 보다도 제안모형이 더 우수한 예측성과를 보임을 확인할 수 있었다.