A method for predicting bank customer churn based on an ensemble machine learning model

The results of research are presented, the purpose of which was to develop a method for predicting the outflow of clients of a commercial bank based on the use of machine learning models (including deep artificial neural networks) for processing client data, as well as the creation of software tools that implement this method. The object of the study is a commercial bank, and the subject of the study is its activities in the B2C segment, which includes commercial interaction between businesses and individuals. The relevance of the chosen area of research is determined by the increased activity of banks in the field of introducing digital services to reduce non-operating costs associated, in particular, with retaining clients, since the costs of attracting new ones are much higher than maintaining existing clients. The scientific novelty of the research results is the developed method for predicting the outflow of commercial bank clients, as well as the algorithm underlying the software that implements the proposed method. The proposed ensemble forecasting model is based on three classification algorithms: k-means, random forest and multilayer perceptron. To aggregate the outputs of individual models, it is proposed to use a learning tree of fuzzy inference systems of the Mamdani type. Training of the ensemble model is carried out in two stages: first, the listed three classifiers are trained, and then, based on the data obtained from their outputs, a tree of fuzzy inference systems is trained. The ensemble model in the proposed method implements a static version of the forecast, the results of which are used in a dynamic forecast performed in two versions – based on the recurrent least squares method and based on a convolutional neural network. Model experiments carried out on a synthetic dataset taken from the Kaggle website showed that the ensemble model has a higher quality of binary classification than each model individually.