October, 2015

Archive

Topology Can Streamline Modelling

How can software systematize and optimize the routine tasks in building financial risk models? “We use topology to inform feature selection, and then we examine a range of models,” said Mukund Ramachandran, Data Scientist at Ayasdi. He was the third of three panellists at the October 27, 2015, webinar on Effective Risk Models Using Machine Intelligence sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals. In the course of evaluating potential models, several statistical tests are applied. “Machine intelligence considers the entire high dimensional space jointly,” he said. Machine learning is capable of applying hundreds of algorithms and different combinations, “but […]

Machine Intelligence + Business Intuition

Given the exponential growth in data complexity, how can you, the risk manager, quickly determine the most salient economic factors to include in calculating a bank’s risk exposure? Nowadays, modelling risk is all about “speed, accuracy, and defensibility,” said Patrick Rogers, Head of Marketing at the software company Ayasdi. Risk models must be developed “in a relatively short time window and must be statistically valid.” Since risk models must be defensible to business owners and industry regulators, and simple to explain, the ordinary “black box” machine learning would fall flat, Rogers said. He was the second of three panellists at […]

“Tons of Models, Tons of Variables”

With so many economic variables, and such a wide choice of parameters, do you feel overwhelmed by the task of producing the best financial model possible? Is there a systematic approach to exploring models? “Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, there’s been a focus on stress testing,” which requires robust financial models, said Roderick Powell, Director of Market and Treasury Risk at the consulting company KPMG. He was the first of three panellists at the October 27, 2015, webinar on Effective Risk Models Using Machine Intelligence sponsored by the Global Association of Risk Professionals. “Building those models is a time-consuming, […]