CHAPTER TITLE PAGE Title Page i Acknowledgments ii Abstract iii Table of Contents iv Abbreviations v List of Figures vi 1 Introduction 1 1.1. Rationale 1 1.2. Objective 2 1.3. Scope of the Research 3 2 Literature Review 4 2.1. Financial Perspective 4 2.2. Existent Systems 8 2.3. Relative Comparison between Methodologies 9 3 Theoretical Considerations 12 3.1. Credit Analysis: What Make a Good Loan? 12 3.2. Financial Ratio Analysis of a Customer’s Financial Statements 14 3.3. Commercial Loan Decision Making Process 19 3.4. Architecture of Expert Systems 19 3.5. Applying Expert System to Commercial Loan Decisions 24 4 Design and Methodology 26 4.1. Methodology 26 4.2. Design 26 4.2.1. Overall Structure Design 26 4.2.2. Implementing Knowledge Base Design 28 5 Conclusions and Recommendations 50 5.1. Overview 50 5.2. Recommendations 51 References 53 Appendix 1: Running the Program 55 Appendix 2: System Information 76 Appendix 3: Sample Reports 89