Deep Learning-Based Loan Approval Prediction Using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Feature Importance Analysis

The increasing demand for efficient and objective credit evaluation has motivated the adoption of artificial intelligence in financial decision-making. This study proposes a deep learning-based loan approval prediction model using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) combined with feature importance analysis to enhance interpretability. The dataset, consisting of 2,000 loan application records with both financial and demographic attributes, was preprocessed through normalization and one-hot encoding to ensure consistent feature representation. The ANN model was trained using three hidden layers (64–32–16 neurons) with the ReLU activation function and optimized using Adam with early stopping to prevent overfitting. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed ANN model achieves an accuracy of 92%, with a precision of 0.91, a recall of 0.93, and a ROC-AUC of 0.95, indicating excellent classification capability. The Permutation Feature Importance analysis revealed that Credit Score, Income, and Loan Amount are the most significant predictors influencing loan approval decisions. These findings confirm that the ANN model can capture complex non-linear relationships among financial attributes while maintaining transparency through explainable AI techniques. The proposed approach contributes both theoretically and practically by combining predictive power with interpretability, offering a reliable and explainable framework for automating loan evaluation in modern financial institutions.