Metadata-Driven Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Financial Question Answering
On the map: Retrieval-augmented generation → Legal and financial RAG
Abstract (arXiv)
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) struggles on long, structured financial filings where relevant evidence is sparse and cross-referenced. This paper presents a systematic investigation of advanced metadata-driven Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) techniques, proposing and evaluating a novel, multi-stage RAG architecture that leverages LLM-generated metadata. We introduce a sophisticated indexing pipeline to create contextually rich document chunks and benchmark a spectrum of enhancements, including pre-retrieval filtering, post-retrieval reranking, and enriched embeddings, benchmarked on the FinanceBench dataset. Our results reveal that while a powerful reranker is essential for precision, the most significant performance gains come from embedding chunk metadata directly with text ("contextual chunks"). Our proposed optimal architecture combines LLM-driven pre-retrieval optimizations with these contextual embeddings to achieve superior performance. Additionally, we present a custom metadata reranker that offers a compelling, cost-effective alternative to commercial solutions, highlighting a practical trade-off between peak performance and operational efficiency. This study provides a blueprint for building robust, metadata-aware RAG systems for financial document analysis.
Key facts. Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Legal and financial RAG, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation. Builds on 60 of its 86 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 28 Oct 2025.
Builds on
60 of 86 references.
Closest ancestors · 1
Same direction, newest first
- 2025FinDER: Financial Dataset for Question Answering and Evaluating Retrieval-Augmented Generation22 Apr
Other references · 59
- 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 60,361
- 2018BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understandingcited by 40,399
- 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
- 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
- 2013Efficient Estimation of Word Representations in Vector Spacecited by 4,375
- 2020Dense Passage Retrieval for Open-Domain Question Answeringcited by 3,824
- 2023Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 2,212
- 2020REALM: Retrieval-Augmented Language Model Pre-Trainingcited by 2,141
- 2023Self-RAG: Learning to Retrieve, Generate, and Critique through Self-Reflectioncited by 1,839
- 2021BEIR: A Heterogenous Benchmark for Zero-shot Evaluation of Information Retrieval Modelscited by 1,252
- 2021Unsupervised Dense Information Retrieval with Contrastive Learningcited by 1,216
- 2020ColBERT: Efficient and Effective Passage Search via Contextualized Late Interaction over BERTcited by 1,178
38 more
- 2022Measuring and Narrowing the Compositionality Gap in Language Modelscited by 1,075
- 2022Interleaving Retrieval with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Knowledge-Intensive Multi-Step Questionscited by 923
- 2020Approximate Nearest Neighbor Negative Contrastive Learning for Dense Text Retrievalcited by 849
- 2017Reading Wikipedia to Answer Open-Domain Questionscited by 777
- 2023Siren's Song in the AI Ocean: A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Modelscited by 698
- 2021Retrieval Augmentation Reduces Hallucination in Conversationcited by 692
- 2019Passage Re-ranking with BERTcited by 645
- 2021FinQA: A Dataset of Numerical Reasoning over Financial Datacited by 562
- 2024RAPTOR: Recursive Abstractive Processing for Tree-Organized Retrievalcited by 532
- 2022Precise Zero-Shot Dense Retrieval without Relevance Labelscited by 517
- 2021ColBERTv2: Effective and Efficient Retrieval via Lightweight Late Interactioncited by 476
- 2024A Survey on RAG Meeting LLMs: Towards Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Modelscited by 452
- 2021TAT-QA: A Question Answering Benchmark on a Hybrid of Tabular and Textual Content in Financecited by 408
- 2019FinBERT: Financial Sentiment Analysis with Pre-trained Language Modelscited by 385
- 2023Benchmarking Large Language Models in Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 312
- 2016Bidirectional Attention Flow for Machine Comprehensioncited by 278
- 2023FinanceBench: A New Benchmark for Financial Question Answeringcited by 270
- 2023FinGPT: Open-Source Financial Large Language Modelscited by 253
- 2025Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Survey on Agentic RAGcited by 249
- 2022Promptagator: Few-shot Dense Retrieval From 8 Examplescited by 235
- 2019Document Expansion by Query Predictioncited by 231
- 2023Query Rewriting for Retrieval-Augmented Large Language Modelscited by 213
- 2024RankRAG: Unifying Context Ranking with Retrieval-Augmented Generation in LLMscited by 202
- 2024Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Graphs (GraphRAG)cited by 172
- 2020FinBERT: A Pretrained Language Model for Financial Communicationscited by 161
- 2024RQ-RAG: Learning to Refine Queries for Retrieval Augmented Generationcited by 147
- 2024Retrieval Augmented Generation or Long-Context LLMs? A Comprehensive Study and Hybrid Approachcited by 119
- 2024LongRAG: Enhancing Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Long-context LLMscited by 108
- 2022Re2G: Retrieve, Rerank, Generatecited by 102
- 2024Blended RAG: Improving RAG (Retriever-Augmented Generation) Accuracy with Semantic Search and Hybrid Query-Based Retrieverscited by 84
- 2024Searching for Best Practices in Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 83
- 2024RAT: Retrieval Augmented Thoughts Elicit Context-Aware Reasoning in Long-Horizon Generationcited by 75
- 2024RAGChecker: A Fine-grained Framework for Diagnosing Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 61
- 2024DocFinQA: A Long-Context Financial Reasoning Datasetcited by 60
- 2023Instruct-FinGPT: Financial Sentiment Analysis by Instruction Tuning of General-Purpose Large Language Modelscited by 58
- 2025Knowledge Graph-Guided Retrieval Augmented Generationcited by 58
- 2024FinTextQA: A Dataset for Long-form Financial Question Answeringcited by 54
- 2024LongRAG: A Dual-Perspective Retrieval-Augmented Generation Paradigm for Long-Context Question Answeringcited by 49
50 most cited of 59 All 59 (JSON)
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 3.
4 papers.
- 2026A Systematic Investigation of Document Chunking Strategies and Embedding Sensitivitycited by 3
- 2025Rethinking Retrieval: From Traditional Retrieval Augmented Generation to Agentic and Non-Vector Reasoning Systems in the Financial Domain for Large Language Modelscited by 2
- 2026Neuro-Symbolic Financial Reasoning via Deterministic Fact Ledgers and Adversarial Low-Latency Hallucination Detectorcited by 2
- 2026A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words? An Empirical Study of Aggregation Strategies for Visual Financial Document Retrievalcited by 0
- 2026A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words? An Empirical Study of Aggregation Strategies for Visual Financial Document Retrieval14 May 2026
- 2026A Systematic Investigation of Document Chunking Strategies and Embedding Sensitivity7 Mar 2026
- 2026Neuro-Symbolic Financial Reasoning via Deterministic Fact Ledgers and Adversarial Low-Latency Hallucination Detector4 Mar 2026
- 2025Rethinking Retrieval: From Traditional Retrieval Augmented Generation to Agentic and Non-Vector Reasoning Systems in the Financial Domain for Large Language Models22 Nov 2025
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2025Optimizing Retrieval Strategies for Financial Question Answering Documents in Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems
- 2026Hierarchical Reranking for Scalable Financial RAG System
- 2024Multi-Reranker: Maximizing performance of retrieval-augmented generation in the FinanceRAG challenge
- 2026Decomposing Retrieval Failures in RAG for Long-Document Financial Question Answering
- 2026Enhancing Financial Report Question-Answering: A Retrieval-Augmented Generation System with Reranking Analysis
- 2025VeritasFi: An Adaptable, Multi-tiered RAG Framework for Multi-modal Financial Question Answering
- 2026HC-RAG: Evidence-Centric Retrieval-Augmented Generation over Heterogeneous Financial Filings
- 2024Improving Retrieval for RAG based Question Answering Models on Financial Documents