Skip to main content

Customer Churn Prediction in Superannuation: A Sequential Pattern Mining Approach

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Book cover Databases Theory and Applications (ADC 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10837))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

The role of churn modelling is to maximize the value of marketing dollars spent and minimize the attrition of valuable customers. Though churn prediction is a common classification task, traditional approaches cannot be employed directly due to the unique issues inherent within the wealth management industry. Through this paper we address the issue of unseen churn in superannuation; whereby customer accounts become dormant following the discontinuation of compulsory employer contributions, and suggest solutions to the problem of scarce customer engagement data. To address these issues, this paper proposes a new approach for churn prediction and its application in the superannuation industry. We use the extreme gradient boosting algorithm coupled with contrast sequential pattern mining to extract behaviors preceding a churn event. The results demonstrate a significant lift in the performance of prediction models when pattern features are used in combination with demographic and account features.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. In: Annual Superannuation Bulletin (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Popović, D., Bašić, B.D.: Churn prediction model in retail banking using fuzzy C-means algorithm. Informatica 33(2) (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Chu, C., Xu, G., Brownlow, J., Fu, B.: Deployment of churn prediction model in financial services industry. In: 2016 International Conference on Behavioral, Economic and Socio-Cultural Computing (BESC), pp. 1–2. IEEE (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ballings, M., Van den Poel, D.: Customer event history for churn prediction: how long is long enough? Expert Syst. Appl. 39(18), 13517–13522 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Ali, Ö.G., Arıtürk, U.: Dynamic churn prediction framework with more effective use of rare event data: the case of private banking. Expert Syst. Appl. 41(17), 7889–7903 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Huang, Y., Zhu, F., Yuan, M., Deng, K., Li, Y., Ni, B., Dai, W., Yang, Q., Zeng, J.: Telco churn prediction with big data. In: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Tsai, C.-F., Chen, M.-Y.: Variable selection by association rules for customer churn prediction of multimedia on demand. Expert Syst. Appl. 37(3) (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Coussement, K., De Bock, K.W.: Customer churn prediction in the online gambling industry: the beneficial effect of ensemble learning. J. Bus. Res. 66(9), 1629–1636 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Burez, J., Van den Poel, D.: Handling class imbalance in customer churn prediction. Expert Syst. Appl. 36(3), 4626–4636 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Idris, A., Rizwan, M., Khan, A.: Churn prediction in telecom using random forest and PSO based data balancing in combination with various feature selection strategies. Comput. Electr. Eng. 38(6), 1808–1819 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Xie, Y., Li, X., Ngai, E.W.T., Ying, W.: Customer churn prediction using improved balanced random forests. Expert Syst. Appl. 36(3), 5445–5449 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Zheng, Z., Wei, W., Liu, C., Cao, W., Cao, L., Bhatia, M.: An effective contrast sequential pattern mining approach to taxpayer behaviour analysis. World Wide Web 19(4), 633–651 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Wright, A.P., Wright, A.T., McCoy, A.B., Sittig, D.F.: The use of sequential pattern mining to predict next prescribed medications. J. Biomed. Inform. 53, 73–80 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Mooney, C.H., Roddick, J.F.: Sequential pattern mining–approaches and algorithms. ACM Comput. Surv. (CSUR) 45(2) (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Agnew, J.R., Bateman, H., Thorp, S.: Financial literacy and retirement planning in Australia. Numeracy: Adv. Educ. Quant. Lit. 6(2) (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Gallery, N., Newton, C., Palm, C.: Framework for assessing financial literacy and superannuation investment choice decisions. Australas. Account. Bus. Financ. J. 5(2), 3 (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Breiman, L.: Random forests. Mach. Learn. 45(1), 5–42 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Phua, C., Cao, H., Gomes, J.B., Nguyen, M.N.: Predicting near-future churners and win-backs in the telecommunications industry. arXiv preprint arXiv:1210.6891 (2012)

  19. Coussement, K., Van den Poel, D.: Churn prediction in subscription services: an application of support vector machines while comparing two parameter-selection techniques. Expert Syst. Appl. 34(1), 313–327 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Chen, T., Guestrin, C.: XGBoost: a scalable tree boosting system. In: ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, pp. 785–794. ACM (2016)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guandong Xu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Culbert, B., Fu, B., Brownlow, J., Chu, C., Meng, Q., Xu, G. (2018). Customer Churn Prediction in Superannuation: A Sequential Pattern Mining Approach. In: Wang, J., Cong, G., Chen, J., Qi, J. (eds) Databases Theory and Applications. ADC 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10837. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92013-9_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92013-9_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92012-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92013-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics