Financial Distress Prediction Based on Support Vector Machine with a Modified Kernel Function

For the financial distress prediction model based on support vector machine, there are no theories concerning how to choose a proper kernel function in a data-dependent way. This paper proposes a method of modified kernel function that can availably enhance classification accuracy. We apply an information-geometric method to modifying a kernel that is based on the structure of the Riemannian geometry induced in the input space by the kernel. A conformal transformation of a kernel from input space to higher-dimensional feature space enlarges volume elements locally near support vectors that are situated around the classification boundary and reduce the number of support vectors. This paper takes the Gaussian radial basis function as the internal kernel. Additionally, this paper combines the above method with the theories of standard regularization and non-dimensionalization to construct the new model. In the empirical analysis section, the paper adopts the financial data of Chinese listed companies. It uses five groups of experiments with different parameters to compare the classification accuracy. We can make the conclusion that the model of modified kernel function can effectively reduce the number of support vectors, and improve the classification accuracy.