Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bester, Tristan, Rosman, Benjamin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11066
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914683072544768
author Bester, Tristan
Rosman, Benjamin
author_facet Bester, Tristan
Rosman, Benjamin
contents Financial inclusion ensures that individuals have access to financial products and services that meet their needs. As a key contributing factor to economic growth and investment opportunity, financial inclusion increases consumer spending and consequently business development. It has been shown that institutions are more profitable when they provide marginalised social groups access to financial services. Customer segmentation based on consumer transaction data is a well-known strategy used to promote financial inclusion. While the required data is available to modern institutions, the challenge remains that segment annotations are usually difficult and/or expensive to obtain. This prevents the usage of time series classification models for customer segmentation based on domain expert knowledge. As a result, clustering is an attractive alternative to partition customers into homogeneous groups based on the spending behaviour encoded within their transaction data. In this paper, we present a solution to one of the key challenges preventing modern financial institutions from providing financially inclusive credit, savings and insurance products: the inability to understand consumer financial behaviour, and hence risk, without the introduction of restrictive conventional credit scoring techniques. We present a novel time series clustering algorithm that allows institutions to understand the financial behaviour of their customers. This enables unique product offerings to be provided based on the needs of the customer, without reliance on restrictive credit practices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_11066
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Towards Financially Inclusive Credit Products Through Financial Time Series Clustering
Bester, Tristan
Rosman, Benjamin
Machine Learning
Computers and Society
Statistical Finance
Financial inclusion ensures that individuals have access to financial products and services that meet their needs. As a key contributing factor to economic growth and investment opportunity, financial inclusion increases consumer spending and consequently business development. It has been shown that institutions are more profitable when they provide marginalised social groups access to financial services. Customer segmentation based on consumer transaction data is a well-known strategy used to promote financial inclusion. While the required data is available to modern institutions, the challenge remains that segment annotations are usually difficult and/or expensive to obtain. This prevents the usage of time series classification models for customer segmentation based on domain expert knowledge. As a result, clustering is an attractive alternative to partition customers into homogeneous groups based on the spending behaviour encoded within their transaction data. In this paper, we present a solution to one of the key challenges preventing modern financial institutions from providing financially inclusive credit, savings and insurance products: the inability to understand consumer financial behaviour, and hence risk, without the introduction of restrictive conventional credit scoring techniques. We present a novel time series clustering algorithm that allows institutions to understand the financial behaviour of their customers. This enables unique product offerings to be provided based on the needs of the customer, without reliance on restrictive credit practices.
title Towards Financially Inclusive Credit Products Through Financial Time Series Clustering
topic Machine Learning
Computers and Society
Statistical Finance
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.11066