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Text Mining and Textual Analysis facilitates early detection of fraud and financial statement manipulation

Institute of Commerce, Nirma University organised a seminar on “Text Mining and Textual Analysis for Predictive Models and Risk Assessments. Speaking at the seminar Dr. Rajendra P. Srivastava, Professor Emeritus of Accounting & Information Systems in the School of Business, University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA, highlighted how text mining and textual analysis can be used by regulators, policy makers and researchers for unearthing any fraudulent activities by reporting entities.

Dr. Srivastava said that the recent developments in information technology in terms of text mining tools and search engines is not only changing the way we gather information and conduct research, but also changing the kinds of questions researchers are asking and answering. Along with these technological developments, individual researchers’ programming skill is also making a difference in terms of how and what kinds of information one can gather. Textual analysis is becoming more popular in accounting and financial research. Dr. Srivastava in his presentation made a live demonstration of “SeekiNF” a search engine developed by his team at University of Kansas, which is used by leading institutions across the world for text mining and textual analysis. “SeekiNF” is a robust system that can scan in seconds a rich data base of 3.3 million documents obtained from SEC and other regulatory filings. “SeekiNF” a cloud based technology provides incredible set of tools to gather financial and non-financial information and develop analytical predictive models for assessing risks such as financial risk, litigation risk, fraud risk, etc. The session was attended by the faculty members of the institute of commerce, institute of management, research scholars and students.