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and outdated processes and data structures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 Ontology
https://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 Ontology
http://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) Ontology
http://www.csw.inf.fuberlin.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
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Information artifacts
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Information artifiacts - specification
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Objects
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Objects – computers
23
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
41
Occurrents - temporal
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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 systems
branch 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
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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
52
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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