IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2503.05966.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Explaining the Unexplainable: A Systematic Review of Explainable AI in Finance

Author

Listed:
  • Md Talha Mohsin
  • Nabid Bin Nasim

Abstract

Practitioners and researchers trying to strike a balance between accuracy and transparency center Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) at the junction of finance. This paper offers a thorough overview of the changing scene of XAI applications in finance together with domain-specific implementations, methodological developments, and trend mapping of research. Using bibliometric and content analysis, we find topic clusters, significant research, and most often used explainability strategies used in financial industries. Our results show a substantial dependence on post-hoc interpretability techniques; attention mechanisms, feature importance analysis and SHAP are the most often used techniques among them. This review stresses the need of multidisciplinary approaches combining financial knowledge with improved explainability paradigms and exposes important shortcomings in present XAI systems.

Suggested Citation

  • Md Talha Mohsin & Nabid Bin Nasim, 2025. "Explaining the Unexplainable: A Systematic Review of Explainable AI in Finance," Papers 2503.05966, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2503.05966
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2503.05966
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dominique Guegan & Peter Martey Addo & Bertrand Hassani, 2018. "Credit Risk Analysis Using Machine and Deep Learning Models," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01835164, HAL.
    2. Peter Martey Addo & Dominique Guegan & Bertrand Hassani, 2018. "Credit Risk Analysis using Machine and Deep learning models," Working Papers 2018:08, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    3. Zhou, Ying & Li, Haoran & Xiao, Zhi & Qiu, Jing, 2023. "A user-centered explainable artificial intelligence approach for financial fraud detection," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PA).
    4. Peter Martey Addo & Dominique Guegan & Bertrand Hassani, 2018. "Credit Risk Analysis using Machine and Deep Learning models," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01719983, HAL.
    5. M. K. Nallakaruppan & Himakshi Chaturvedi & Veena Grover & Balamurugan Balusamy & Praveen Jaraut & Jitendra Bahadur & V. P. Meena & Ibrahim A. Hameed, 2024. "Credit Risk Assessment and Financial Decision Support Using Explainable Artificial Intelligence," Risks, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-18, October.
    6. Dumitrescu, Elena & Hué, Sullivan & Hurlin, Christophe & Tokpavi, Sessi, 2022. "Machine learning for credit scoring: Improving logistic regression with non-linear decision-tree effects," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 297(3), pages 1178-1192.
    7. Dominique Guegan & Peter Martey Addo & Bertrand Hassani, 2018. "Credit Risk Analysis Using Machine and Deep Learning Models," Post-Print halshs-01835164, HAL.
    8. Shun Chen & Lei Ge, 2019. "Exploring the attention mechanism in LSTM-based Hong Kong stock price movement prediction," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(9), pages 1507-1515, September.
    9. Peter Martey Addo & Dominique Guegan & Bertrand Hassani, 2018. "Credit Risk Analysis Using Machine and Deep Learning Models," Risks, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-20, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dan Wang & Zhi Chen & Ionut Florescu, 2021. "A Sparsity Algorithm with Applications to Corporate Credit Rating," Papers 2107.10306, arXiv.org.
    2. Apostolos Ampountolas & Titus Nyarko Nde & Paresh Date & Corina Constantinescu, 2021. "A Machine Learning Approach for Micro-Credit Scoring," Risks, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-20, March.
    3. Gunnarsson, Björn Rafn & vanden Broucke, Seppe & Baesens, Bart & Óskarsdóttir, María & Lemahieu, Wilfried, 2021. "Deep learning for credit scoring: Do or don’t?," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 295(1), pages 292-305.
    4. Roy Cerqueti & Francesca Pampurini & Annagiulia Pezzola & Anna Grazia Quaranta, 2022. "Dangerous liasons and hot customers for banks," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 65-89, July.
    5. Theuri, Joseph & Olukuru, John, 2022. "The impact of Artficial Intelligence and how it is shaping banking," KBA Centre for Research on Financial Markets and Policy Working Paper Series 61, Kenya Bankers Association (KBA).
    6. José Américo Pereira Antunes, 2021. "To supervise or to self-supervise: a machine learning based comparison on credit supervision," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, December.
    7. Keerthana Sivamayil & Elakkiya Rajasekar & Belqasem Aljafari & Srete Nikolovski & Subramaniyaswamy Vairavasundaram & Indragandhi Vairavasundaram, 2023. "A Systematic Study on Reinforcement Learning Based Applications," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(3), pages 1-23, February.
    8. Amirhosein Mosavi & Yaser Faghan & Pedram Ghamisi & Puhong Duan & Sina Faizollahzadeh Ardabili & Ely Salwana & Shahab S. Band, 2020. "Comprehensive Review of Deep Reinforcement Learning Methods and Applications in Economics," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(10), pages 1-42, September.
    9. Salima Smiti & Makram Soui, 2020. "Bankruptcy Prediction Using Deep Learning Approach Based on Borderline SMOTE," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 22(5), pages 1067-1083, October.
    10. Anastasios Petropoulos & Vasilis Siakoulis & Evaggelos Stavroulakis & Aristotelis Klamargias, 2019. "A robust machine learning approach for credit risk analysis of large loan level datasets using deep learning and extreme gradient boosting," IFC Bulletins chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Are post-crisis statistical initiatives completed?, volume 49, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Anastasios Petropoulos & Vasilis Siakoulis & Evaggelos Stavroulakis & Aristotelis Klamargias, 2019. "A robust machine learning approach for credit risk analysis of large loan-level datasets using deep learning and extreme gradient boosting," IFC Bulletins chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), The use of big data analytics and artificial intelligence in central banking, volume 50, Bank for International Settlements.
    12. Seyyide Doğan & Yasin Büyükkör & Murat Atan, 2022. "A comparative study of corporate credit ratings prediction with machine learning," Operations Research and Decisions, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Management, vol. 32(1), pages 25-47.
    13. Martin Leo & Suneel Sharma & K. Maddulety, 2019. "Machine Learning in Banking Risk Management: A Literature Review," Risks, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-22, March.
    14. Dominique Guegan & Bertrand K. Hassani, 2019. "Risk Measurement," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-02119256, HAL.
    15. Nenad Milojević & Srdjan Redzepagic, 2021. "Prospects of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Application in Banking Risk Management," Journal of Central Banking Theory and Practice, Central bank of Montenegro, vol. 10(3), pages 41-57.
    16. Hossein Hassani & Xu Huang & Emmanuel Silva & Mansi Ghodsi, 2020. "Deep Learning and Implementations in Banking," Annals of Data Science, Springer, vol. 7(3), pages 433-446, September.
    17. Irving Fisher Committee, 2019. "The use of big data analytics and artificial intelligence in central banking," IFC Bulletins, Bank for International Settlements, number 50.
    18. Kim, A. & Yang, Y. & Lessmann, S. & Ma, T. & Sung, M.-C. & Johnson, J.E.V., 2020. "Can deep learning predict risky retail investors? A case study in financial risk behavior forecasting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 283(1), pages 217-234.
    19. A. R. Provenzano & D. Trifir`o & A. Datteo & L. Giada & N. Jean & A. Riciputi & G. Le Pera & M. Spadaccino & L. Massaron & C. Nordio, 2020. "Machine Learning approach for Credit Scoring," Papers 2008.01687, arXiv.org.
    20. Yaseen Ghulam & Kamini Dhruva & Sana Naseem & Sophie Hill, 2018. "The Interaction of Borrower and Loan Characteristics in Predicting Risks of Subprime Automobile Loans," Risks, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-21, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2503.05966. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.