Assessing bank default determinants via machine learning

The financial sector is very interested in Artificial Intelligence due to the opportunities that it offers, especially those related to methods of machine-learning. The aim of this paper is to employ a variety of machine-learning algorithms to identify the main determinants of bank default and to understand the impact of each variable on it. Bank default is one of the most studied topics in financial literature because of the severity of its consequences on the whole eco- nomic system. However, little attention has been paid to the identification of the major determinants of bank failures via machine-learning approaches. This paper employs several machine-learning algorithms, including a graph neural network that has never been used in a financial context. Another novelty is the implementation of a balanced dataset by customising the heuristic oversampling method based on k-means and synthetic minority over-sampling technique. This paper also deals with the inclusion of competition among the possible default determinants. The dataset consists of all the banks in the Euro Area in the period 2018–2020. The results obtained are useful from both micro- and macro-economic points of view.