A Machine Learning Approach To The Prediction Of Bank Customer Churn Problem

Customers in the banking industry nowadays have many options when deciding where to invest their money. Customer retention and churn have thus emerged as crucial challenges for the majority of banks. This research tries to solve the customer churn problem by applying machine learning algorithms. Classifiers such as Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting, eXtreme Gradient Boosting, and Light Gradient Boosting are employed. To this end, first, the irrelevant features are removed by applying a feature selection technique, and the most pertinent features are identified, second, the resulting data set is balanced using the SMOTE method. The results of experiments on classifiers with balanced data and with imbalanced data are compared in terms of accuracy, recall, precision, and performance. In the case of imbalanced data (before the SMOTE is applied) no classifier over-performed others. In the case of balanced data (after SMOTE is applied) the Random Forest classifier outrightly overperformed other classifiers.