A data processing system program to develop, train, and implement a neural network for identifying customers who represent a bad debt risk is disclosed. A feature vector is applied to a neural network to generate outputs that approximate the relative likelihood that customers who are the subjects of the records used to generate the feature vector will be a bad debt risk. Statistical values relating categorical attributes of the customers to the likelihood of their becoming a bad debt risk are substituted for the categorical attributes, and the attributes are normalized before the feature vector is applied to the network. In one embodiment the customers are customers of a long distance service provider.