A federated interpretable scorecard and its application in credit scoring

In this paper, we propose a vertical federated learning (VFL) structure for logistic regression with bounded constraint for the traditional scorecard, namely FL-LRBC. Under the premise of data privacy protection, FL-LRBC enables multiple agencies to jointly obtain an optimized scorecard model in a single training session. It leads to the formation of scorecard model with positive coefficients to guarantee its desirable characteristics (e.g., interpretability and robustness), while the time-consuming parameter-tuning process can be avoided. Moreover, model performance in terms of both AUC and the Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) statistics is significantly improved by FL-LRBC, due to the feature enrichment in our algorithm architecture. Currently, FL-LRBC has already been applied to credit business in a China nation-wide financial holdings group.