Credit Intelligence & Modelling: Many Paths through the Forest

by Raymond A. Anderson

Forest Paths is a follow-up to Anderson's The Credit Scoring Toolkit, published by Oxford University Press in 2007, which was considered the bible of the industry. Where the Toolkit was broad-brush, this book focuses on the model-development process, but not without providing significant context. It assumes little prior knowledge and is appropriate for both university students and practitioners. It is the first real textbook on the topic, including chapters'-end questions. There are six modules: 1) an introduction to credit and predictive modelling; 2) micro-histories of credit, credit intelligence, and risk modelling; 3) statistical and predictive modelling theory; 4) project management and data assembly; 5) data preparation from sampling to reject inference; and 6) model training through to implementation. Appendices include an extensive glossary, bibliography, and index. The book is comprehensive, with much applicable to other domains, and includes many historical and contemporary anecdotes as well as numerous examples and illustrations. Although the focus is credit risk, especially in the retail consumer and small-business segments, many concepts are common across disciplines as diverse as psychology, biology, engineering, and computer science, whether academic research or practical use. It also covers issues relating to the use of machine learning for credit-risk assessment.#creditintelligence #creditrisk #creditscoring #creditscore #creditscores #creditbureau #credithistory #predictivemodeling #predictiveanalytics

496 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2019

About the author

Raymond Anderson is a Canadian author and banking specialist based in Cape Town, South Africa. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he has worked in banking, credit risk, scoring, analytics and model governance, advising institutions in developed and emerging markets.

He is the author of The Credit Scoring Toolkit and Credit Intelligence and Modelling, both published by Oxford University Press. His work combines practical experience with a longstanding interest in how institutions make decisions under uncertainty — and in what happens when judgement is displaced by procedure, data or models.

His books are not confined to banking. Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? A Student’s and Intellectual’s Guide for the Toilet explores the history, variations and surprisingly subversive possibilities of one of the world’s most familiar jokes. His four-volume series, Trading in Promises: The Hidden History of Trust, Credit, and Judgement, takes on a larger question: how people have made promises credible, from ancient debt tablets and merchant networks to modern credit bureaux and algorithms.

His writing ranges across economics, history, law, religion, technology and human behaviour, sometimes seriously and sometimes with tongue firmly in cheek. He believes that credit begins not with money, but with confidence — and that the history of finance is ultimately a history of human judgement.