1 Expert Systems in Finance – a Cross - Section of the Field

This paper surveys a number of well-known expert systems in the domain of finance. The idea is to illustrate the span of typical expert systems in finance and to provide an insight into the approaches and techniques they employ. The systems considered in the paper are all working systems, and come from different fields of finance. Specifically, the systems considered are FINEVA (from the field of financial analysis), PORT-MAN (banking management), INVEX (investment advisory) and FAME (financial marketing). The paper also briefly presents DEVEX, an expert system for currency exchange advising in international business transactions. Financial institutions in lessdeveloped and undeveloped countries that deal with currency exchange often face some specific problems that don’t exist in well-developed regions of the world. DEVEX helps bank employees to cope with such problems. Since business transactions between developed countries and Third World ones represent an important part of the world’s financial affairs, the problems covered in DEVEX go beyond local financial institutions.