• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.9
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• pp.71-78
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• 2019

This study aims to identify good borrowers within the context of P2P lending. P2P lending is a growing platform that allows individuals to lend and borrow money from each other. Inherent in any loans is credit risk of borrowers and needs to be considered before any lending. Specifically in the context of P2P lending, traditional models fall short and thus this study aimed to rectify this as well as explore the problem of class imbalances seen within credit risk data sets. This study implemented an over-sampling technique known as Synthetic Minority Over-sampling Technique (SMOTE). To test our approach, we implemented five benchmarking classifiers such as support vector machines, logistic regression, k-nearest neighbor, random forest, and deep neural network. The data sample used was retrieved from the publicly available LendingClub dataset. The proposed SMOTE revealed significantly improved results in comparison with the benchmarking classifiers. These results should help actors engaged within P2P lending to make better informed decisions when selecting potential borrowers eliminating the higher risks present in P2P lending.