This study attempts to show how a Kohonen map can be used to improve the temporal stability
of the accuracy of a financial failure model. Most models lose a significant part of their ability to
generalize when data used for estimation and prediction purposes are collected over different time
periods. As their lifespan is fairly short, it becomes a real problem if a model is still in use when
re-estimation appears to be necessary. To overcome this drawback, we introduce a new way of using
a Kohonen map as a prediction model. The results of our experiments show that the generalization
error achieved with a map remains more stable over time than that achieved with conventional
methods used to design failure models (discriminant analysis, logistic regression, Cox’s method,
and neural networks). They also show that type-I error, the economically costliest error, is the
greatest beneficiary of this gain in stability.