Wikipedia article:Subprime lending

In finance, subprime lending (also referred to as near-prime, non-prime, and second-chance lending) means making loans to people who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule. These loans are characterized by higher interest rates and less favorable terms in order to compensate for higher credit risk.

Proponents of subprime lending maintain that the practice extends credit to people who would otherwise not have access to the credit market. Professor Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton University explained, "The main thing that innovations in the mortgage market have done over the past 30 years is to let in the excluded: the young, the discriminated-against, the people without a lot of money in the bank to use for a down payment."

Defining subprime risk

The term subprime refers to the credit quality of particular borrowers, who have weakened credit histories and a greater risk of loan default than prime borrowers.As people become economically active, records are created relating to their borrowing, earning and lending history. This is called a credit rating, and although covered by privacy laws the information is readily available to people with a need to know (in some countries, loan applications specifically allow the lender to access such records). Subprime borrowers have credit ratings that might include:

• limited debt experience (so the lender's assessor simply does not know, and assumes the worst), or
• no possession of property assets that could be used as security (for the lender to sell in case of default)
• excessive debt (the known income of the individual or family is unlikely to be enough to pay living expenses + interest + repayment),
• a history of late or sometimes missed payments (morose debt^{[citation needed]}) so that the loan period had to be extended,
• failures to pay debts completely (default debt), and
• any legal judgments such as "orders to pay" or bankruptcy (sometimes known in Britain as county court judgements or CCJs).

Lenders' standards for determining risk categories may also consider the size of the proposed loan, and also take into account the way the loan and the repayment plan is structured, if it is a conventional repayment loan, a mortgage loan, an endowment mortgage, an interest only loan, a standard repayment loan, an amortized loan, a credit card limit or some other arrangement. The originator is also taken into consideration. Because of this, it was possible for a loan to a borrower with "prime" characteristics (e.g. high credit score, low debt) to be classified as subprime.

Wikipedia article:Social Credit

Social credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas (1879–1952), a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity". This philosophy is interdisciplinary in nature, encompassing the fields of economics, political science, history, accounting and physics. Assuming the only safe place for power is in many hands, social credit is a distributive philosophy, and its policy is to disperse power to individuals. Social Credit philosophy is best summed by Douglas when he said, "Systems were made for men, and not men for systems, and the interest of man which is self-development, is above all systems, whether theological, political or economic." Douglas said that Social Crediters want to build a new civilization based upon absolute economic security for the individual—where “...they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid. In other words, Douglas did not seek to build a utopia, but to set the conditions upon which each individual can build their own utopia.

It was while he was reorganising the work at Farnborough during World War I that Douglas noticed that the weekly total costs of goods produced was greater than the sums paid out to workers for wages, salaries and dividends. This seemed to contradict the theory put forth by classic Ricardian economics, that all costs are distributed simultaneously as purchasing power. Troubled by the seeming disconnect between the way money flowed and the objectives of industry ("delivery of goods and services", in his view), Douglas set out to apply engineering methods to the economic system.

Douglas collected data from over a hundred large British businesses and found that in every case, except that of companies heading for bankruptcy, the sums paid out in salaries, wages and dividends were always less than the total costs of goods and services produced each week: the workers were not paid enough to buy back what they had made. He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the English Review where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of accountancy which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a technical impossibility." He later formalized this observation in his A+B theorem. The theorem divides a company's payments into two categories: A = income, and B = payments to other organizations. Prices equal A+B, but income only equals A in any cycle of production and consumption. Since income (A) is always less than total prices (A+B), he believed the theorem demonstrated that people's income is always insufficient to buy back all of production: the consequence of which is ever increasing debt.

Settlement (finance)

Settlement of securities is a business process whereby securities or interests in securities are delivered, usually against (in simultaneous exchange for) payment of money, to fulfill contractual obligations, such as those arising under securities trades.

In the U.S., the settlement date for marketable stocks is usually 3 business days after the trade is executed, and for listed options and government securities it is usually 1 day after the execution.

As part of performance on the delivery obligations entailed by the trade, settlement involves the delivery of securities and the corresponding payment.

A number of risks arise for the parties during the settlement interval, which are managed by the process of clearing, which follows trading and precedes settlement. Clearing involves modifying those contractual obligations so as to facilitate settlement, often by netting and novation.

Nature of settlement

Settlement involves the delivery of securities from one party to another. Delivery usually takes place against payment, but some deliveries are made without a corresponding payment (sometimes referred to as a free delivery). Examples of a delivery without payment are the delivery of securities collateral against a loan of securities, and a delivery made pursuant to a margin call.

Wikipedia article:Revolving credit

Revolving credit is a type of credit that does not have a fixed number of payments, in contrast to installment credit. Examples of revolving credits used by consumers include credit cards. Corporate revolving credit facilities are typically used to provide liquidity for a company's day-to-day operations. They were first introduced by the Strawbridge and Clothier Department Store.

Typical characteristics

• Case study is required
• The borrower may use or withdraw funds up to a pre-approved credit limit.
• The amount of available credit decreases and increases as funds are borrowed and then repaid.
• The credit may be used repeatedly.
• The borrower makes payments based only on the amount they've actually used or withdrawn, plus interest.
• The borrower may repay over time (subject to any minimum payment requirement), or in full at any time.
• In some cases, the borrower is required to pay a fee to the lender for any money that is undrawn on the revolver; this is especially true of corporate bank loan revolving credit facilities.

A revolving loan facility provides a borrower with a maximum aggregate amount of capital, available over a specified period of time. However, unlike a term loan, the revolving loan facility allows the borrower to drawdown, repay and re-draw loans advanced to it of the available capital during the term of the facility. Each loan is borrowed for a set period of time, usually one, three or six months, after which time it is technically repayable. Repayment of a revolving loan is achieved either by scheduled reductions in the total amount of the facility over time, or by all outstanding loans being repaid on the date of termination. A revolving loan made to refinance another revolving loan which matures on the same date as the drawing of the second revolving loan is known as a "rollover loan", if made in the same currency and drawn by the same borrower as the first revolving loan. The conditions to be satisfied for drawing a rollover loan are typically less onerous than for other loans.
A revolving loan facility is a particularly flexible financing tool as it may be drawn by a borrower by way of straightforward loans, but it is also possible to incorporate different types of financial accommodation within it - for example, it is possible to incorporate a letter of credit facility, swingline facility or overdraft facility within the terms of a revolving credit facility. This is often achieved by creating a sublimit within the overall revolving facility, allowing a certain amount of the lenders' commitment to be drawn in the form of these different facilities.


Description above from the Wikipedia article Revolving credit,More

Wikipedia article:Predatory lending

Predatory lending describes unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices of some lenders during the loan origination process. While there are no legal definitions in the United States for predatory lending, an audit report on predatory lending from the office of inspector general of the FDIC broadly defines predatory lending as "imposing unfair and abusive loan terms on borrowers. Though there are laws against many of the specific practices commonly identified as predatory, various federal agencies use the term as a catch-all term for many specific illegal activities in the loan industry. Predatory lending should not be confused with predatory mortgage servicing which is used to describe the unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices of lenders and servicing agents during the loan or mortgage servicing process, post loan origination.

One less contentious definition of the term is "the practice of a lender deceptively convincing borrowers to agree to unfair and abusive loan terms, or systematically violating those terms in ways that make it difficult for the borrower to defend against." Other types of lending sometimes also referred to as predatory include payday loans, credit cards or other forms of consumer debt, and overdraft loans, when the interest rates are considered unreasonably high. Although predatory lenders are most likely to target the less educated, the poor, racial minorities, and the elderly, victims of predatory lending are represented across all demographics.

Predatory lending typically occurs on loans backed by some kind of collateral, such as a car or house, so that if the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender can repossess or foreclose and profit by selling the repossessed or foreclosed property. Lenders may be accused of tricking a borrower into believing that an interest rate is lower than it actually is, or that the borrower's ability to pay is greater than it actually is. The lender, or others as agents of the lender, may well profit from repossession or foreclosure upon the collateral.

Wikipedia article:Line of credit

A line of credit is any credit source extended to a government, business or individual by a bank or other financial institution. A line of credit may take several forms, such as overdraft protection, demand loan, special purpose, export packing credit, term loan, discounting, purchase of commercial bills, traditional revolving credit card account, etc. It is effectively a bank account that can readily be tapped at the borrower's discretion. Interest is paid only on money actually withdrawn, although the borrower may be required to pay an unused line fee, often an annualized percentage fee on the money not withdrawn. Lines of credit can be secured by collateral or unsecured.

Lines of credit are often extended by banks, financial institutions and other licensed consumer lenders to creditworthy customers (though certain special purpose lines of credit may not have creditworthiness requirements) to address liquidity problems; such a line of credit is often called a personal line of credit. The term is also used to mean the credit limit of a customer, that is, the maximum amount of credit a customer is allowed.

Cash credit

A cash credit is a short-term cash loan to a company. A bank provides this type of funding, but only after the required security is given to secure the loan. Once a security for repayment has been given, the business that receives the loan can continuously draw from the bank up to a certain specified amount.

Cash Credit in India

In India, banks offer Cash Credit accounts to businesses to finance their ' Working Capital ' requirements [ requirements to buy raw materials or ' Current Assets ', as opposed to machinery or buildings, which would be called ' Fixed Assets ' ] . The cash credit account is similar to current accounts as it is a running account [ i.e. payable on demand ] with cheque book facility. But unlike ordinary current accounts, which are supposed to be overdrawn only occasionally, the cash credit account is supposed to be overdrawn almost continuously. The extent of overdrawing is limited to the Cash Credit Limit that is sanctioned by the bank. This sanction is based on an assessment of the maximum working capital requirement of the organisation less the margin . The organisation finances the margin amount from its own funds.

Generally, Cash Credit account is secured by a charge on the Current assets [ inventory ] of the organisation. The kind of charge created can be either Pledge or Hypothecation.

Special purpose line of credit

A relatively recent credit product has arisen due to economic trends and the impact the economy has had on individuals in general, but specifically for disadvantaged individuals due to special circumstances, affiliations, gender, or external bias. Lenders of many types have explored providing targeted services to select groups. However, most successful attempts have been done by consumer lending entities (licensed and unlicensed) that are generally filling a niche credit service abandoned by the traditional providers. These are credit services that, based on one or more pre-defined criteria, may qualify a borrower for their credit services.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Line of credit,More

Equity (finance)

In accounting and finance, equity is the residual claim or interest of the most junior class of investors in assets, after all liabilities are paid. If liability exceeds assets, negative equity exists. In an accounting context, Shareholders' equity (or stockholders' equity, shareholders' funds, shareholders' capital or similar terms) represents the remaining interest in assets of a company, spread among individual shareholders of common or preferred stock.

At the start of a business, owners put some funding into the business to finance operations. This creates a liability on the business in the shape of capital as the business is a separate entity from its owners. Businesses can be considered, for accounting purposes, sums of liabilities and assets; this is the accounting equation. After liabilities have been accounted for the positive remainder is deemed the owner's interest in the business.

This definition is helpful in understanding the liquidation process in case of bankruptcy. At first, all the secured creditors are paid against proceeds from assets. Afterward, a series of creditors, ranked in priority sequence, have the next claim/right on the residual proceeds. Ownership equity is the last or residual claim against assets, paid only after all other creditors are paid. In such cases where even creditors could not get enough money to pay their bills, nothing is left over to reimburse owners' equity. Thus owners' equity is reduced to zero. Ownership equity is also known as risk capital or liable capital.

Financial literacy

Financial literacy is the ability to understand finance. More specifically, it refers to the set of skills and knowledge that allows an individual to make informed and effective decisions through their understanding of finances. Raising interest in personal finance is now a focus of state-run programs in countries including Australia, Japan, the United States and the UK.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) started an inter-governmental project in 2003 with the objective of providing ways to improve financial education and literacy standards through the development of common financial literacy principles. In March 2008, the OECD launched the International Gateway for Financial Education, which serves as a clearinghouse for financial education programs, information and research worldwide. In the UK, the alternative term “financial capability” is used by the state and its agencies: the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK started a national strategy on financial capability in 2003. The US Government also established its Financial Literacy and Education Commission in 2003.

In July 2010, the United States Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act), which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB has been tasked, among other mandates, with promoting financial education through its Consumer Engagement & Education group.

International findings

An international OECD study was published in late 2005 analysing financial literacy surveys in OECD countries. A selection of findings included:

Default (finance)

In finance, default occurs when a debtor has not met his or her legal obligations according to the debt contract, e.g. has not made a scheduled payment, or has violated a loan covenant (condition) of the debt contract. A default is the failure to pay back a loan. Default may occur if the debtor is either unwilling or unable to pay his or her debt. This can occur with all debt obligations including bonds, mortgages, loans, and promissory notes.

Distinction from insolvency and bankruptcy

The term default should be distinguished from the terms insolvency and bankruptcy.

• "Default" essentially means a debtor has not paid a debt which he or she is required to have paid.
• "Insolvency" is a legal term meaning that a debtor is unable to pay his or her debts.
• "Bankruptcy" is a legal finding that imposes court supervision over the financial affairs of those who are insolvent or in default.

Types of default

Default can be of two types: debt services default and technical default. Debt service default occurs when the borrower has not made a scheduled payment of interest or principal. Technical default occurs when an affirmative or a negative covenant is violated.

Affirmative covenants are clauses in debt contracts that require firms to maintain certain levels of capital or financial ratios. The most commonly violated restrictions in affirmative covenants are tangible net worth, working capital/short term liquidity, and debt service coverage.

Wikipedia article:Debt

A debt is an obligation owed by one party (the debtor) to a second party, the creditor; usually this refers to assets granted by the creditor to the debtor, but the term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on economic value.

A debt is created when a creditor agrees to lend a sum of assets to a debtor. Debt is usually granted with expected repayment; in modern society, in most cases, this includes repayment of the original sum, plus interest.

In finance, debt is a means of using anticipated future purchasing power in the present before it has actually been earned. Some companies and corporations use debt as a part of their overall corporate finance strategy.

Etymology

The word comes from the French dette and ultimately Latin debere (to owe), from de habere (to have). The letter b in the word debt was reintroduced in the 18th century, possibly by Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of 1755 – several other words that had existed without a b had them reinserted at around that time.

History of debt

See also: History of money

Debt is as old as economy. The anthropologist David Graeber argues in Debt: The First 5000 Years that trade starts with some sort of credit namely the promise to pay later for already handed over goods. Therefore credit and debt existed even before coins.

Wikipedia article:Credit score

A credit score is a numerical expression based on a statistical analysis of a person's credit files, to represent the creditworthiness of that person. A credit score is primarily based on credit report information typically sourced from credit bureaus.Lenders, such as banks and credit card companies, use credit scores to evaluate the potential risk posed by lending money to consumers and to mitigate losses due to bad debt. Lenders use credit scores to determine who qualifies for a loan, at what interest rate, and what credit limits. Lenders also use credit scores to determine which customers are likely to bring in the most revenue. The use of credit or identity scoring prior to authorizing access or granting credit is an implementation of a trusted system.

Credit scoring is not limited to banks. Other organizations, such as mobile phone companies, insurance companies, landlords, and government departments employ the same techniques. Credit scoring also has a lot of overlap with data mining, which uses many similar techniques.

Australia

In Australia, credit scoring is widely accepted as the primary method of assessing credit worthiness. Credit scoring is not only used to determine whether credit should be approved to an applicant, but credit scoring is also used in the setting of credit limits on credit cards/store cards, in behavioral modelling such as collections scoring, and also in the pre-approval of additional credit to a company's existing client base.

Although logistic (or non-linear) probability modelling is still the most popular means by which to develop scorecards, various other methods offer extremely powerful alternatives, including MARS, CART, CHAID, and random forests.

At present Veda Advantage, the main provider of credit file data, only provides a negative credit reporting system which contains information on applications for credit and adverse listings indicating a default under a credit contract. This makes accurate credit scoring difficult for banks if they have no existing relationship with a prospective borrower.

Wikipedia article:Credit risk

Credit risk refers to the risk that a borrower will default on any type of debt by failing to make payments which it is obligated to do. The risk is primarily that of the lender and include lost principal and interest, disruption to cash flows, and increased collection costs. The loss may be complete or partial and can arise in a number of circumstances. For example:

• A consumer may fail to make a payment due on a mortgage loan, credit card, line of credit, or other loan
• A company is unable to repay amounts secured by a fixed or floating charge over the assets of the company
• A business or consumer does not pay a trade invoice when due
• A business does not pay an employee's earned wages when due
• A business or government bond issuer does not make a payment on a coupon or principal payment when due
• An insolvent insurance company does not pay a policy obligation
• An insolvent bank won't return funds to a depositor
• A government grants bankruptcy protection to an insolvent consumer or business

To reduce the lender's credit risk, the lender may perform a credit check on the prospective borrower, may require the borrower to take out appropriate insurance, such as mortgage insurance or seek security or guarantees of third parties, besides other possible strategies. In general, the higher the risk, the higher will be the interest rate that the debtor will be asked to pay on the debt.

Credit score (United States)

A credit score in the United States is a number representing the creditworthiness of a person, the likelihood that person will pay his or her debts.

Lenders, such as banks and credit card companies, use credit scores to evaluate the potential risk posed by lending money to consumers. Widespread use of credit scores has made credit more widely available and cheaper for consumers.

Credit scoring models

FICO score

The best-known and most widely used credit score model in the United States, the FICO score is calculated statistically, with information from a consumer's credit files. The letters stand for Fair Isaac Corporation.

It provides a snapshot of risk that banks and other institutions use to help make lending decisions. Applicants with higher FICO scores might be offered better interest rates on mortgages or automobile loans as well as higher credit limit amounts.

Makeup of the FICO score

Credit scores are designed to measure the risk of default by taking into account various factors in a person's financial history. Although the exact formulas for calculating credit scores are secret, FICO has disclosed the following components:

Credit history

Credit history or credit report is, in many countries, a negative record of an individual's or company's past borrowing and repaying, including information about late payments and bankruptcy. The term "credit reputation" can either be used synonymous to credit history or to credit score.

In the U.S., when a customer fills out an application for credit from a bank, store or credit card company, their information is forwarded to a credit bureau. The credit bureau matches the name, address and other identifying information on the credit applicant with information retained by the bureau in its files. That's why it's very important for creditors, lenders and others to provide accurate data to credit bureaus.

This information is used by lenders such as credit card companies to determine an individual's credit worthiness; that is, determining an individual's ability and track record of repaying a debt. The willingness to repay a debt is indicated by how timely past payments have been made to other lenders. Lenders like to see consumer debt obligations paid regularly and on time, and therefore focus particularly on missed payments and may not, for example, consider an overpayment as an offset for a missed payment.

There has been much discussion over the accuracy of the data in consumer reports. In general, industry participants maintain that the data in credit reports is very accurate. The credit bureaus point to their own study of 52 million credit reports to highlight that the data in reports is very accurate. The Consumer Data Industry Association testified before the United States Congress that less than two percent of those reports that resulted in a consumer dispute had data deleted because it was in error. Nonetheless, there is widespread concern that information in credit reports is prone to error. Thus Congress has enacted a series of laws aimed to resolve both the errors and the perception of errors.

Commercial credit reporting

Commercial credit reporting is the maintenance and reporting of credit histories and risks for commercial companies.

While most people are familiar with consumer credit reports many are unaware that a similar reporting system exists to assess risk in extending loans to businesses, insuring businesses, underwriting insurance risk, purchasing businesses, investing in businesses and most of all in shipping goods to business on credit terms. 
Government departments are also large users of commercial credit for regulating businesses and in collecting taxes.

Every country in the world has commercial (or mercantile) credit reporting agencies, if for no other reason than to allow foreign exporters to asses the risk in shipping goods to a wholesaler in that country. They can be large public corporations like U.S.A. headquartered, Dun & Bradstreet Inc. (traded on the New York Stock Exchange, established in 1842) with thousands of employees and offices and correspondents around the world. A recent development in commercial credit reporting is Cortera – which combines data reporting comparable to Dun & Bradstreet , but which also runs an online community in which businesses put up online ratings on if/how/when they get paid by their own customers and suppliers (ratings visible to other community members. They can also be small one man operations serving a limited number of local and foreign clients in a small country.
Before telephones and the internet, the only way to gather risk information on a business was to visit the business owner at their place of business. Credit reporters would ask the owner for the names of the companies that supplied them on credit terms, what banks they dealt with and detailed questions about number of employees, what was sold, etc. They would then contact these suppliers and banks for reference information. It took days, even weeks, to fulfill a request for a commercial credit report.

Credit (finance)

Credit is the trust which allows one party to provide resources to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately (thereby generating a debt), but instead arranges either to repay or return those resources (or other materials of equal value) at a later date. The resources provided may be financial (e.g. granting a loan), or they may consist of goods or services (e.g. consumer credit). Credit encompasses any form of deferred payment. Credit is extended by a creditor, also known as a lender, to a debtor, also known as a borrower.

Credit does not necessarily require money. The credit concept can be applied in barter economies as well, based on the direct exchange of goods and services (Ingham 2004 p. 12-19). However, in modern societies credit is usually denominated by a unit of account. Unlike money, credit itself cannot act as a unit of account.

Movements of financial capital are normally dependent on either credit or equity transfers. Credit is in turn dependent on the reputation or creditworthiness of the entity which takes responsibility for the funds. Credit is also traded in financial markets. The purest form is the credit default swap market, which is essentially a traded market in credit insurance. A credit default swap represents the price at which two parties exchange this risk – the protection "seller" takes the risk of default of the credit in return for a payment, commonly denoted in basis points (one basis point is 1/100 of a percent) of the notional amount to be referenced, while the protection "buyer" pays this premium and in the case of default of the underlying (a loan, bond or other receivable), delivers this receivable to the protection seller and receives from the seller the par amount (that is, is made whole).