To minimise its increased exposure following a big increase in the number of its outlets in Spain, which now stand at 160, the Hispamer Financial Group SA, part of the Banco Hispana Americano SA, has developed its own expert system, called Seul. The system, which runs on an MS-DOS micro, will make lease finance decisions based on input data for the specific proposal, and a set of 900 rules and 10 connection levels. It also offers constant cash flow predictions for which it analyses the payments due account, income pending, profits and so on, justifying all decisions made. Although Seul simulates the thought processes, experience and knowledge of risk assessors, it is not binding in its no answers and the company’s directors are still free to override it. Seul takes two to three minutes to make its decisions, on amounts between $400,000 to $500,000. Hispamer’s services company, Servicor AI Group, developed the system in just nine months at a cost of $200,000 and the prototype has been in use in UniLeasing’s Madrid headquarters and outlet since the beginning of the year, and in the other 10 outlets since mid-February. From last September Seul has undergone 10 revisions and thousands of tests. Servicor used PC Consultant software, dBaseIII and the Scheme language for Seul’s data development and Fortran for its statistics development. The original simple database will eventually become a data collection system integrated on an IBM AS/400 that will feeding the expert system. Operations will be stored on a central host so that the outlets, at present functioning independently, can find out if a request has been made in another office and why. Within Europe, other expert systems applied to leasing include one model in Italy, another in France and a third still being developed in the UK. Servicor’s previous successes include development of the first expert system for the national airline, Iberia.
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