DiSCourse Seminar with Galina Andreeva
3 March 2023, 12:00 (CET), hybrid
Digital Science Center, Innrain 15, 1st floor, Open Space Area or Big Blue Button
DiSCourse* - The Digital Science Seminar Series on
Algorithmic Bias in Credit Scoring: Lessons Learned and Unresolved Problems
Credit Scoring is one of the most popular examples of algorithmic bias in decision-making. However, the issues of equality, discrimination and bias are complex and often misunderstood. Despite the long history of debate around fairness in lending, there are no definitive solutions. This talk will provide a brief overview of relevant regulations, previous research and industry practice in tackling discrimination and bias. It will also draw on a numeric illustration of gender bias from Andreeva and Matuszyk (2019)1, which is based on a unique real-life dataset from one of the European lenders. The objective is to demonstrate that simple solutions, such as removal of Gender as a predictor from a credit scoring model, do not lead to equal or gender-neutral outcomes.
1 Andreeva, G & Matuszyk, A 2019, 'The law of equal opportunities or unintended consequences? The impact of unisex risk assessment in consumer credit', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Statistics in Society Series A, vol. 182, no. 4, pp. 1287-1311. https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12494
*featuring a distinguished guest: Galina Andreeva, University of Edinburgh Business School
Dr Galina Andreeva, Professor of Societal Aspects of Credit: Galina’s research evolves around credit risk of individuals and small businesses (SMEs) using statistical and machine-learning techniques. She is particularly interested in the social impact of credit and lending technologies, which includes fairness and algorithmic bias. Galina holds positions of Director for Credit Research Centre (CRC) and Joint Head of Management Science & Business Economics Group within The University of Edinburgh Business School. CRC has been at the forefront of quantitative research of credit risk for more than 20 years, successfully bringing together academics and practitioners.