Fuzzy-based decision support system for private banking

Abstract

Private banking is one of the most profitable services offered by financial institutions in Brazil. In this service, a client should consider the suitability of a range of banking product, during his or her life based on dynamic objectives. It is a very complex service that involves regulation from governmental agencies, financial institutions’ interests, and clients’ objectives. It is not uncommon for these aspects to be conflicting, hindering the decision-making process and leading to unwanted decisions. This paper describes the development of a decision support system (DSS) for private banking, called OptPrivate, that integrates the suitability assessment with the portfolio selection, enabling the investor to choose a portfolio based on several and conflicting objectives. The DSS considers the investment selection problem in two interconnected subproblems: suitability and capital allocation. In the former, the DSS is based on an integrated modeling approach that considers legal aspects and investors’ preferences throughout a fuzzy multiple-attribute decision-making approach (MADM), called FTOPSIS-Class. In the latter, a fuzzy multi-objective optimization model uses the sorting results from the previous step to define a portfolio, simultaneously considering risk, return, and the investor’s profile. To facilitate the DSS application, linguistic variables are used in several aspects of the decision-making process, including risk exposure. The DSS was validated using field tests at a well-respected private bank in Brazil. The DSS recommends more suitable portfolios, in line with the investor’s profile, with greater profitability and less volatility than those recommended by the financial analysts for all test cases.