Retail Banking Ontology

Lauren Madar

IE 500 Ontological Engineering

Dr. Barry Smith & Ron Rudnicki

Fall 2014

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Introduction

What is Retail Banking?

Banks providing products and services targeted towards

consumers and individuals

Why is an ontology needed?

Communication problems inside the bank

Communication and data issues between different banks

that must work together

Outside parties requesting information from the bank, not

knowing what to ask for or terminology

But, many organizations face these same issues…

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So…? How are retail banks different?

Retail Banks have additional challenges:

Requires massive amounts of recordkeeping

Errors and failures cause immediate customer concern

Differences in vocabulary from bank to bank

Traditional (long-lived) Banks also face:

High overhead and infrastructure costs due to ‘brick and mortar’ branches

Banking predates modern computers, resulting in residual and outdated processes and data structures

Redundant systems and processes due to acquisitions

Most traditional banks are not technology-oriented institutions

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Why does this matter now?

Retail Banking competition

Easy for smaller companies to offer online banking services without high overhead

With more options, customers are less likely to be loyal, and will ‘jump ship’ for a bank that offers services they want

Changing customer base

More and more people are comfortable with and want online services

Branches are an advantage, but overhead costs must be balanced

Regulatory Agencies

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It takes a long time to turn a big ship

Old, redundant, and inefficient systems

Changes to existing systems require:

Massive amounts of research time, and therefore are high

cost

Lack of documentation of data structures – “I’d have to look

at the database”

Communication difficulties

Easier and cheaper to add new, small, but possibly

redundant features and systems than to fix what is already there

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Look at the database?

Subject matter experts on processes and products may not be technically oriented

Data structures may have been built by absorbed organizations or by vendors long ago and not improved

Barrier to sharing knowledge

Contributing to an ontology doesn’t require knowledge of database schemas

How it works today vs. what would be most optimal

High level mapping of what systems and processes interact doesn’t exist in an easily understood way (picture = 1000 words)

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Construction & usage

Who would help build and use the Retail Banking

Ontology?

Banks that serve consumers

Other financial institutions, government and regulatory

agencies

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Output, other benefits

What other benefits could RBO provide?

Querying and knowledgebase tools and services

Employee training

Documentation

Opportunity to identify redundant or inefficient processes

Drive prioritization of system improvement to align with bank

goals

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In other words…

Agility

+

Desired products & services

+

Efficient processes

=

More customers

More customers + reduced cost = profit!

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Relevant work

In addition to BFO, two other ontologies were imported.

FIBO – Financial Industry Business Ontology

http://www.omg.org/hot-topics/finance.htm

Beneficial features:

Financial terms useful to Retail Banking such as currency,

equity, assets

Terms regarding organizations such as organizational

subunits, agents, legal person

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FIBO issues

Challenges and problems:

Structured without BFO

Many parent-level terms and definition of many “concepts”

that don’t fit well within BFO

Issues with numerous FIBO components in Protégé

prevented reasoners from running

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Relevant work - IAO

IAO – Information Artifact Ontologyhttps://code.google.com/p/information-artifact-ontology/

Beneficial features:

Detailed terms relating to information artifacts

Structured to use BFO, making term reuse easy

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IAO Issues

Problem:

Complex relationships created issues with

reasoners in Protégé

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Other ontologies

Related in subject matter but not imported:

FEF: Financial Exchange Framework Ontology

http://www.financial-format.com/fef.htm

No longer updated, no response to requests for files.

Finance Ontology http://www.fadyart.com/ontologies/documentation/finance/index.html

Some similarities to FIBO, not BFO-compatible, possible future

integration opportunity.

Organization Ontologyhttp://www.cs.umd.edu/projects/plus/SHOE/onts/org1.0.html

Not based on BFO, focused on physical products, few

relationships. FIBO’s organization component was more

applicable.

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Other ontologies

Related in subject matter but not imported:

REA (Resources, Events, Agents) Ontologyhttp://www.csw.inf.fu-

berlin.de/vmbo2014/submissions/vmbo2014_submission_24.pdf

No links found to ontology, paper discussing incorporating

an REA ontology to FIBO, possible future integration

opportunity.

IFIKR: Islamic Finance Ontology

http://ifikr.isra.my/if-knowledge-base

Specific to Islamic banks, possible future integration.

Interesting ontology map display.

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IFIKR

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IFIKR

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RBO term deep dive

Information artifacts

Objects & aggregates

Specifically dependent continuants

Occurrents

Individuals

Relationships

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Information artifiacts

Information artifacts

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Information artifiacts - specification

Objects

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Objects – computers

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Objects – agent and legal person

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Object aggregates

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Object aggregate - organization

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Qualities

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Qualities

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Qualities

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Qualities

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Qualities

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Functions

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Functions – bank account

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Functions – transfer money

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Functions - data

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Roles

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Roles – employee and customer

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Roles – security assets and processes

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Occurrents

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Occurrents – bank process

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Occurrents - temporal

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Occurrents - temporal

Individuals

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Relationships examples

‘has role’ instead of ‘bearer of’

‘owns’ and ‘is owned by’ bank account, account holder role

‘participates in at some time’ process, role bearers

‘represents’ legal entity, organization

‘manages’bank technology group, bank systemsbranch manager, branch

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Relationships examples

‘is provided by’, ‘constrains’

bank account specification, bank account, bank

organization

‘is assigned to’

bank relationship manager, bank account holder

‘has member’, ‘is member of’

bank cost center, organizational sub-unit

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Relationship examples

‘has person name’

legal person

‘is held by’

real estate, bank organization (eg rent, occupy, uses)

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Detailed examination

Bank Account

Relationships between people, organizations and

representations of monetary value

Bank Organization

Banks, employee roles, systems, groups

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Bank Account

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Bank Account

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Bank Organization

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Bank Organization

Project challenges

Difficulties fitting FIBO “concepts” into BFO structure

Categorizing and defining Account term was a struggle,

as it is not just an information artifact and has

relationships and qualities

Difficulty importing FIBO and IAO components prevented the testing of inference and validation of relationships

Scope grew much larger than anticipated

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Future tasks

Resolve issues with FIBO and IAO imports and complete

relationships between all currently defined terms

Define bank processes to greater level of detail

Publish RBO and provide information for other banking

organizations to contribute and edit

Create a searchable knowledgebase for banking terms

(using SparQL or similar) for use by developers and/or

vendors to document or find information about complex systems

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Questions?

Thank you!

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