A Posteriori
This is a post-research approach where a theoretical framework is developed, based on the results of the research already conducted.

A Priori
A theoretical framework that is developed prior to research being carried out.

ABA Routing Number
A number which directs electronic ACH deposits to the proper bank institution. Also referred to as Transit Routing Number.

Abandon Rate
A measurement of customer service quality based on the percentage of total incoming calls to a customer service centre that are abandoned by customers because they are placed on hold too long. See Call Abandonment or Abandoned Call.

Abandoned Call
Also called a Lost Call. The caller hangs up before reaching the agent. See Call Abandonment.

Abatement
A reduction in or reprieve from a tax, debt or any other payment obligation.

Abeyance
The suspension of a title to real estate while lawful ownership is being determined.

Ability to Pay
A borrower`s ability to meet current and future debt obligations.

Abnormal Return
A fraction of a return that is not caused by systematic factors. e.g. market wide price movements.

ABS
Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, this is a plastic material formed through injection moulding and used in the production of certain Smart Cards.

Absolute Advantage
The ability of one entity to engage in more efficient production than another entity. Assuming equal inputs, the entity with an absolute advantage will have a greater output.

Absolute Priority
The order in which payment is made to the different classes of creditors.

Absolute Priority Rule (APR)
The order of payment used in many bankruptcy litigation systems. Typically, major creditors are fully compensated before minor creditors receive anything, and minor creditors are fully compensated before shareholders receive anything. In practice, lower status creditors and shareholders often receive some degree of compensation for expediting the settlement process. Also known as Cram-down Rules.

Absorbed
1) Treated as an expense, rather than passing the cost on to customers.
2) Businesses that merge due to an acquisition.

Accelerated Benefits
Included in life insurance policies as benefits available before death e.g. catastrophic events or terminal illness.

Accelerated Depreciation
A depreciation method which subtracts a higher fraction of an asset's value in the early stages.

Acceleration Clause
Allows for lenders to require the entire repayment of a loan when the loan is in default. Also see Demand Feature.

Acceleration Clause
A provision that allows a lender to demand payment of the total outstanding balance or demand additional collateral under certain circumstances, such as failure to make payments, bankruptcy, non-payment of taxes on mortgaged property, or the breaking of loan covenants.

Acceptance Rate
The fraction or percentage of the total number of applications that are granted the credit they applied for.

Accepts
Applications that pass the credit review process and are subsequently granted credit.

Access
The name previously used in the UK for some MasterCard cards. The name has now been mostly phased out.

Access Bond
A facility that allows you to draw funds up to a predetermined loan amount.

Access Card
A plastic card used in automated teller machines (ATM) for deposits, cash withdrawals, account transfers, and other related functions.

Access Control
A way that confidential data on a computer or network can be protected from unauthorised access.

Access Devices
A new name for PCs, it refers to handheld devices and any computer component that can access a network.

Access Provider
A company that provides its customers with a service to access the Internet. The user normally connects to the access provider's server via a modem using a dial-up connection.

Access Rights
The level of access a user is given to read or write computer documents or execute computer programs.

Access Time
The amount of time it takes for a computer to retrieve any stored data.

Accessibility
The quality of a system, incorporating hardware or software, that makes it usable by people with one or more physical disabilities, such as restricted mobility, blindness, or deafness.

Accidental Death Benefit
A life insurance policy provision that calls for an additional payment, usually equal to the face amount of the insurance, in the event of accidental death.

Accompanied Shopping
A technique used mostly by market researchers. An interviewer accompanies and observes the behaviour of a consenting respondent when they go shopping.

Account
A credit agreement between a consumer and a credit issuer. An account may be a closed-end agreement, such as an instalment loan, or an open-end agreement, such as a bankcard or retail account (revolving).

Account Aggregation
An online service provided to individuals, allowing them to consolidate a range of accounts, credit cards, and other financial information into one interface, in order to simplify the managing of personal finances.

Account Management
The process of dealing with customers across all aspects of their account, such as credit limit management, re-issue, authorisations, collections and marketing.

Account Management Scorecard
A statistically derived behaviour scorecard developed for predicting the future risk on accounts that are currently in order. These are generally used for setting credit limits, shadow limits, authorisations decisions, marketing solicitations and repricing actions.

Account Management System
A computer system that automates and manages the ongoing risk management function of accounts. It typically includes behaviour scoring, champion-challenger strategies, decision keys and reporting. It may be run on a mainframe or on personal computers, either singly or networked.

Account Number
A unique sequence of numbers assigned to a cardholder account that identifies the issuer and type of financial transaction card.

Account Processing System
A computer system that processes accounts on a daily and monthly basis. It typically includes account reconciliation, statementing, transaction processing and letter generation. It may be run on a mainframe or on personal computers, either singly or networked.

Accountability
When a person is obliged to answer for their actions and explain them to a manager.

Accountable
When a person is held responsible for something.

Accounting Analytic
A method used in evaluating company credit quality. This process involves in-depth financial analysis and the application of recognised financial ratios.

Accrued Interest
Interest earned which is then added to the principle amount outstanding.

Accuracy
A measure of how close a measured value is to the true value.

ACD
Acronym for Automatic Call Distributor. It is used in call centres for routing calls to available agents, holds overflow calls, gives and takes messages and provides reports. See Automatic Call Distributor, Automated Attendant, Database Call Handling, Historical Reports and Call Control Variables.

ACH
Acronym for Automated Call Handling. The process whereby incoming calls are answered and handled by a pre-recorded script, using specialist computer and telecoms equipment. Also see IVR or VIC.

ACH
Automated Clearing House. A regional organisation used by member banks to electronically transfer funds between members. Also see Internet Cheque Acceptance or Direct Payment.

ACH Network
A central distribution and settlement point for electronic items exchanged among depository financial institutions. Also see Automated Clearing House or ACH.

Achieved Communality
A term used in factor analysis to represent the proportion of variance in an original variable, as accounted for by all the extracted factors. Each original variable will have an achieved communality value in the factor analysis output.

Acknowledgment of Debt
A term used to describe a document from which a debtor’s acknowledgment of a claim or undertaking to pay a debt can be inferred.

Acquiescence Bias
During an interviewing process, respondents may tend to agree with whatever is presented to them. The danger is that this can create a systematic bias in the results.

Acquirer
An organisation that recruits a retailer who then accepts credit card transactions. An acquirer is typically a bank or other financial services organisation.

Acquirer Fraud
Acquirer fraud is often perpetrated by dishonest merchants who are in collusion with fraudulent parties. Fraudulent transactions are often charged back to the issuers, who then have to bear the costs of this fraudulent acquirer activity.

Acquiring Bank
A bank that acquires credit card transactions via terminals and other Point-of-Sale terminals (POS) at merchant locations. See Customer Lifetime Value.

Acquiring Processor
The processor provides credit card processing, billing, reporting and settlement, and operational services to the acquirer. Many financial institutions hire a third party for more cost-effective bankcard processing.

Acquisition Cost
The total cost of signing up a new customer. Lifetime Value is often used to compute the maximum allowable acquisition cost.

Acquisition Device
The hardware used to acquire biometric samples.

Acquisition Programme
Any marketing activity where the primary intent is to draw response from prospects not currently doing business with an organisation.

Act of Insolvency
Certain behaviour of, or actions by, a debtor have been designated by the Legislature as acts of insolvency, which tend to show that a debtor is, in fact, insolvent. These acts are set out in each countries insolvency laws. Also see Chapter 11.

Activation
Encouraging the account holder to make the first transactions on their new credit product.

Active Data Objects (ADO)
Components that enable client applications to access and manipulate data in a file or server – based database, through a provider.

Active Hyperlink
A hyperlink that is currently selected in a Web browser. Some Web browsers indicate the active hyperlink by changing its colour. See Hyperlink.

Active Rule
A rule in a rule set that is turned on and is evaluated.

ActiveX
A set of technologies that enables software components to interact with one another in a networked environment, regardless of the language in which the components are created. ActiveX is used primarily to develop interactive content for the World Wide Web, although it can be used in desktop applications and other programs.

Activity Based Costing (ABC)
A method of measuring the cost and performance of activities and cost objectives. Assigns cost to activities based on their use of resources and assigns cost to cost objects based on their use of activities.

Actuarial
Related to the mathematics behind insurance practices.

Actuarial Method
Interest on the outstanding balance. Also see Simple Interest Financing.

Ad Blocking
A publisher can request that certain online ads not be displayed by the ad network.

Ad hoc Report
A type of report that is a query or answers a one-off question, such as: how many women over 60 have purchased more than $200 in goods from us in the last 4 months?

Ad hoc Research
Research that is specifically designed to address a particular problem or issue. Ad-hoc research is conducted when there is insufficient existing research on the subject.

Ad Network
A company that sells advertising for many individual Web sites and is designed to let ad buyers reach broad audiences relatively easily by buying online ads.

Ad Space
The space on a Web page that is reserved for online ads.

Ad View
A Web page with an online ad that the reader can click to open and read further.

Adaptability
The process of testing an existing scorecard to see if it will fit a different applicant population.

Adaptability Study
The procedure of testing the applicability of a scorecard on a population other than the one used in development.

Adaptive Control System
A computer system that automates and manages the ongoing risk management function of accounts. It typically includes Behaviour Scoring, Champion-Challenger strategies, Decision Keys and reporting. It may be run on a mainframe or on personal computers, either singly or networked.

Add-on
The1988 Basel Capital Accord recognises that the credit risk of long dated financial derivatives fluctuates in value, and estimates this exposure both in terms of current exposure and potential exposure. The add-on amount that approximates future replacement costs is computed by multiplying the notional amount of the transaction by the required add-on factor.

Add-on Interest
One method of calculating instalment-loan finance charges, with interest calculated on the full amount borrowed over the life of the loan. Lenders are required to quote rates in terms of annual interest, so you can compare the true cost of this type of financing with simple interest financing, which computes interest only on the outstanding balance.

Additional Cardholder
One credit card account can sometimes have two (or more) credit cards issued on it. The main cardholder is responsible for paying the bill, whoever made the purchases. There is a limit for the account on the total amount that can be spent with the card each month which applies to both the main and the additional cardholders.

Additive
Refers to relationships that do not display high order interaction or association.

Additive Points
The process of adding points to all of the Attributes of some or all of a scorecard’s characteristics. This will change the score that an applicant will receive, but does not change the rank order of any group of applicants, as they will all receive the same number of additive points.

Address
A computer term for the location of a piece of information on a disk or in memory. Addresses help the computer to find information rapidly, and to store it for later retrieval.

Address Verification (AVS)
A service provided through merchant services in which the merchant verifies the cardholder's address. Primarily used by mail/telephone order merchants to combat fraud. It is not a guarantee that a transaction is valid.

Adequate Protection
The right of a party with an interest in a debtor`s property (such as a secured creditor) to assurance that its interest will not be diminished during a bankruptcy proceeding.

Adjustable Mortgage Loan
A mortgage loan that allows maximum flexibility in selecting the terms under which interest rates and payments may be adjusted over the maturity of the loan.

Adjustable Rate Loan or Adjustable Rate Mortgage
A loan with an interest rate that may be varied during the term of the loan. The payments generally increase or decrease with the interest rate.

Adjusted Balance
A method of calculating an open-end finance charge, (such as on a charge account), by subtracting payments made during the billing period and applying the interest rate to the balance.

Administration Fee
Fee charged by a lender to cover the initial costs of processing a loan application.

Administration Order
A temporary freeze on all debts while an administrator, appointed by the court, reviews the debtor’s financial circumstances.

Administrative Claim
The debt incurred by a debtor, with court approval, after a bankruptcy filing. This includes costs such as wages, salaries, court costs, lawyers` fees, accountants` fees, trustees` expenses, etc.

Administrator
In legal terms, this is the person who administers an estate or a trust. The administrator is court-appointed and has the power to deal with the debts and assets of the estate or trust.

ADO (Active Data Objects)
Components that enable client applications to access and manipulate data in a file or server-based database, through a provider. Also known as Active Data Objects.

Adobe
Acrobat is a software program created by Adobe. It decodes, reads and converts documents in a format called PDF (Portable Document Format).

Adoption Rate
The rate that consumers or businesses adopt a particular product, service or technology.

ADSL
Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line provides high speed internet access to send data over existing copper telephone lines.

Advermation
Online advertising which is presented in such a way that it appears to be information to a user and not a marketing message.

Adverse Action Notice
A lender’s notice to refuse, end, or reduce credit. Under the U.S. Fair Credit Billing Act, creditors must disclose the reason.

Adverse Selection
A situation where sellers have information that buyers don`t (or vice versa) about some aspect of the product quality.

Advertainment
Media that advertises a product or brand while being entertaining and is used to promote interaction between the consumer and the campaign.

Advertorial
An advert that resembles editorial content and usually relates to a product or service being promoted.

Advising Bank
A bank that accepts a letter of credit from the issuing bank and verifies its authenticity before forwarding it to the beneficiary. The advising bank does not take on any payment obligations.

Adware
Software application in which advertising banners are displayed while a program is running e.g. pop-up adverts.

Affective Component
This is one of the three components of attitude, relating to individual emotions or feelings towards an object or idea.

Affidavit
A written statement, sworn or affirmed before a Commissioner of Oaths, in the name of the deponent, used to support applications at court or to give evidence.

Affiliate
Relationship between two companies where one company owns substantial interest, but less than a majority of the voting shares of another company, or when two companies are both subsidiaries of a third company.

Affinity
A description of people who have a similar lifestyle.

Affinity Analysis
A process of finding relationships between customer purchases. For example, people who buy beach towels also purchase suntan lotion.

Affinity Card
A credit card issued in conjunction with an organisation or collective group; for example, profession, alumni, retired persons association. The card issuer often pays the organisation a royalty.

Affinity Card Programme
A programme created to offer issuers the opportunity to issue affinity or co-branded cards as well as life-style or specialised custom-feature cards targeted at potential cardholders having common interests or membership in an organisation.

Affinity Fraud
A scam that targets members of a specific demographic. Pyramid schemes are sometimes combined with affinity fraud.

Affinity Matrix
A cross tab showing cross- buying patterns by customers who did or did not buy products A, B, C and D.

Affluents
Households with a disposable income that is greater than 30% of the cost of living plus taxes.

Affordability
A lender will assess whether applicant can afford the monthly instalments on a debt e.g. home loan or personal loan.

Affordability Analysis
A detailed examination of an individual`s ability to afford a house, taking into consideration income, liabilities, available funds, mortgage type, home price and closing costs.

AFIS
Acronym for Automated Fingerprint Identification System. A system where a person has his/her finger image compared with existing personal data by placing a finger on a scanner, or by the scanning of inked paper impressions.

After Acquired Clause
A contractual clause in a mortgage agreement stating that any additional mortgageable property attained by the borrower after the mortgage is signed will be regarded as additional security for the obligation referenced in the original mortgage.

Age
The current number of fully elapsed years of a person’s lifetime, from the date of the person’s birth.

Agent
The person who handles incoming or outgoing calls. Also referred to as a customer service representative (CSR), telephone sales or telephone service representative (TSR), rep, associate, consultant, engineer, operator, technician, account executive, team member, customer service.

Agent Group
A collection of Agents that share a common set of skills, such as being able to handle customer complaints. Also called split, gate, or skills group.

Agent Out Call
An outbound call placed by an agent.

Agent Status
The mode an agent is in - Talk Time, After-Call Work, Unavailable, etc.

Aggregate
The process of taking all units as a whole, the sum or total.

Aggregate Data
Data that is the result of applying a process to combine data elements. Data that is taken collectively or in a summary format.

Aging Schedule
A table of accounts receivable broken down into age categories (such as 0-30 days, 30-60 days, and 60-90 days) and used to determine if customer payments are keeping close to schedule.

Agreement of Sale
Contract signed by a buyer and seller stating the terms and conditions under which a property will be sold.

AHT
Acronym for Average Handle Time. The sum of average talk time and average after-call work for a specified time period.

AI
Acronym for Artificial Intelligence. Software designed to imitate or perform functions that are normally associated with human intellectual abilities.

Air Miles
Air miles are earned with every use of an airline affiliated card, and then transferred monthly to the cardholder`s account with that airline.

Algorithm
A process of computation involving a sequential series of steps.

Algorithmic Encryption
The computational scrambling of security codes to prevent unauthorised access to information.

All Trunks Busy (ATB)
A scenario where all trunks are busy in a specific trunk group. Generally, reports indicate how many times all trunks were busy, and how much total time all trunks were busy. What they don’t reveal is how many callers received the engaged signal when all trunks were busy.

Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses
An accounting reserve setting aside the equivalent value of expected losses that arise from credit defaults.

Alphanumeric
A set of characters that contains both letters (alpha) and numbers (numeric) and is usually used in cryptic passwords.

AltaVista
A leading search engine among Web users, it indexes Web sites, newsgroups, and other postings using a hybrid search model.

Altered Card
A card on which the original embossed or encoded information has been altered for fraudulent purposes.

Alternative Hypothesis
A statement suggesting that a different effect is present. The alternative hypothesis is adopted when the null hypothesis has been disproved.

Amendment
When a change is made to the terms of a letter of credit. The beneficiary has the right to refuse the amendment under an irrevocable letter of credit.

American Express
A Travel & Entertainment card issuer.

Amortisation
The repayment of debt according to a schedule over a specified time period.

Amount
The original loan amount for instalment accounts, credit limit, or high balance for revolving accounts.

Analogue Line
Standard telephone service is delivered over analogue lines. Modern improved service, (often used for data lines), comes over digital telephone lines in which all the sounds are converted into binary (1's and 0's). Also see Digital Line.

Analysis
The study of the relationships between facts, in order to determine patterns.

Analysis of Covariance
Abbreviated ANCOVA. This is an analysis of variance procedure in which the effects of one or more metric-scaled extraneous variables (covariates) are removed from the dependent variable data prior to conducting an analysis of variance or ANOVA.

Analysis of Variance
Abbreviated ANOVA. This is a statistical technique for examining the differences among means for two or more populations.

Analytical Model
A structure and process for analysing a data set. For example, a decision tree is a model for the classification of a data set.

Analytics
The process and results of an analysis.

Anchor
A word or phrase, or image that is used as a target for a link. When the user clicks on the hypertext, the browser will direct him to the anchor, which may exist in the same document or a different document.

Anchor Label
A label used to define an extremity of a measurement scale.

ANCOVA
Abbreviation for Analysis of Covariance. . This is an analysis of variance procedure in which the effects of one or more metric-scaled extraneous variables (covariates) are removed from the dependent variable data prior to conducting an analysis of variance or ANOVA.

Angels
Private individuals with capital to invest in business enterprises.

ANI
The Automatic Number Identification is a system that can identify the number of the person calling you on the telephone. This can also be linked to a database to find the callers name and address.

Announcement
A recorded verbal message played to callers.

Annual Cap
A limit on the amount of the adjusted interest rate for an adjustable rate mortgage over a twelve-month period. Also known as Cap.

Annual Fee
A fee charged on an annual basis for the customer’s use of a credit product. Most commonly associated with credit cards.

Annual Fee Waiver
The process of waiving or decreasing the annual fee charged on a credit product.

Annual Percentage Rate (APR)
The rate of interest charged by a creditor on an annual basis. The APR helps borrowers compare the cost of alternative loans.

Annual Premium
This is the premium payable once a year in respect of a life assurance or a home owner’s insurance policy.

Annual Report
The formal financial statement issued yearly by a corporation. The annual report shows assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses, earnings - how the company stood at the close of the business year, how it fared profit-wise during the year and other information of interest to shareowners.

Annuities
A stream of annual payments of fixed amount for a defined period of time.

Anomalous Data
Data taking on unexpected values that result either from errors (for example, data entry errors) or from unusual events. Anomalous data should be examined carefully because it may carry important information.

Anonymity
The process of concealing identity.

Anonymous FTP
The ability to access a remote computer system on which one does not have an account, via the Internet’s File Transfer Protocol (FTP). Users have restricted access rights with anonymous FTP and usually can only list, view, or copy files to or from a public directory on the remote system. Many FTP sites do not permit anonymous FTP access, in order to maintain security.

Anonymous FTP
A method of retrieving a file from another computer and copying it to your own, without actually logging in with a secret ID and password. This allows large host computers to provide their systems to outside computers who otherwise would not have access.

Anonymous Posting
A message posted to a newsgroup that does not identify the person who sent it.

ANOVA
Abbreviation for Analysis of Variance. This is a statistical technique for examining the differences among means for two or more populations.

ANSI
American National Standards Institute develops and publishes worldwide accepted industrial standards in computing and information technology.

Answer Call
When referring to an agent group, a call counted as answered when it reaches an agent.

Antenna
Copper coil inside a contactless smartcard which transmits electric impulses within a magnetic field.

Anti-Collision
A feature commonly used in contactless card systems to prevent conflicts between different signals competing for attention at the same time.

API
Application Programming Interface. A set of software functions which facilitates communication between applications and other kinds of programs, services, or devices.

Appended Data
The process whereby a customer file has data appended to it, (such as age, income, home value), from an external data file. Also see Overlays.

Applet
A computer program, written in Java, that you can download using a Web browser. Applets obey special rules that make it difficult for them to damage your computer.

Applicant
Any person who requests or who has received a credit from a creditor, including any person who is or may become contractually liable for an extension of credit. The term includes guarantors, sureties, endorsers, and similar parties.

Application
An oral or written request for credit that is made in accordance with procedures established by a creditor for the type of credit requested; the term does not include the use of an account or line of credit to obtain an amount of credit that is within a previously established credit limit.

Application Data
The information provided by the applicant on the application form.

Application Fee
A fee charged by the lender or broker for the processing of a loan application.

Application Processing
The operational function dedicated to the timely processing of new applications in accordance with company lending policies.

Application Programming Interface
Abbreviated as API. A set of software functions which facilitates communication between applications and other kinds of programs, services, or devices.

Application Score
The score calculated on just the application data. This does not include any external data, such as credit bureau information.

Application Time Data
The information that is available to the credit grantor at the time an application is made. This can include the application form, credit bureau information, merchandise details and any other internal or external data sources.

Application Window
The timeframe during which applications are taken for a development sample.

Applications Processing System
A computer system that automates the applications processing process. It can include a scoring algorithm, validation checks, policy rules and on-line credit bureau checks. It may be run on a mainframe or on personal computers, either singly or networked.

Appraisal Fee
The charge for estimating the value of property offered as security.

Approval Rate
The proportion of an organisation’s through the door population who are accepted when applying for credit facilities.

APR
Abbreviation for Annual Percentage Rate. The rate of interest charged by a creditor on an annual basis. The APR helps borrowers compare the cost of alternative loans.

APR
Absolute Priority Rule referring to the order of payment used in many bankruptcy litigation systems. Typically, major creditors are fully compensated before minor creditors receive anything, and minor creditors are fully compensated before shareholders receive anything. In practice, lower status creditors and shareholders often receive some degree of compensation for expediting the settlement process. Also known as Cram-down Rules.

Arbitrage
The process of buying and selling similar securities or shares in different markets to take advantage of the differences in value.

Architecture
The basic design of a system. Determines how the components work together, systems capacity, upgrade ability, and the ability to integrate with other systems.

Archive Data
Credit Bureau profile records stored to tape at quarterly intervals.

Area Sampling
A form of cluster sampling where geographical areas make up the clusters. Also see Clustering.

Arithmetic Average
The arithmetic average of a population or a sample of observations. Also known as the Mean.

ARPAnet
The original ancestor of the Internet, funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Software designed to imitate or perform functions that are normally associated with human intellectual abilities.

Ascending Cumulative Statistics
A score table indicating what percentage of the applications can be expected to score that score or less.

ASCII
American Standard format for data storage on magnetic media (tape or disk).

ASIC
Acronym for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. An integrated circuit developed for specific applications to improve performance.

ASP
Active Server Page is a programming tool from Microsoft that creates dynamic pages that interact with a database. The extension .asp is used in the Internet address.

Assessment
When applying for a home loan, the Bank will assess the value of the property.

Assessment Fee
The fee will cover the administration work that accompanies a property assessment.

Asset Swap
A transaction where the right of ownership to an asset is transferred from one entity to another. As an example, a personal endowment policy can be assigned to a bank in return for a personal loan.

Assets
Items of commercial value. Assets can be either tangible or intangible, but must always represent a value to the owner.

Assignment
The name given for any method of inferring the behaviour of rejected applications.

Assignment of Proceeds
A request made by a beneficiary to pay all or part of the funds due to him to a third party. This instrument does not transfer rights in the letter of credit.

Association
The relationship between two or more categorical variables in a cross-tabulation, i.e. does knowledge of the value of one variable offer any insight into the distribution of the offers.

Association Rule
A data mining term generally used in the context of a database of transactions, where the rules represent associations between data items. The presence of one set of items in a transaction implies the presence of other items with some specified degree of confidence.

Association Technique
A projective technique where participants are presented with stimulus material and asked to respond with the first thought or impulse that comes to mind.

Associative Model
A model that associates one or more phenomena with the phenomenon that is being predicted.

Assume
An agreement to continue to perform duties under a contract or lease.

Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line
Also known as ADSL. Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line provides high speed internet access to send data over existing copper telephone lines.

Asynchronous Multimodality
A system that requires a user to be verified through more than one biometric in sequence. Asynchronous multimodal solutions are comprised of one, two or three distinct authentication processes. A typical user interaction will consist of a verification on finger scan, then face if finger is successful.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Also known as ATM. Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a form of communication technology that uses high-bandwidth, low-delay transport technology and multiplexing techniques to carry two digital signals of varying bandwidth.

ATB
Abbreviation for All Trunks Busy. When all trunks are busy in a specific trunk group. Generally, reports indicate how many times all trunks were busy, and how much total time all trunks were busy. What they don’t reveal is how many callers received the engaged signal when all trunks were busy.

ATM
Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a form of communication technology that uses high-bandwidth, low-delay transport technology and multiplexing techniques to carry two digital signals of varying bandwidth.

ATM
Acronym for "Automated Teller Machine". An unattended terminal that has electronic capability, accepts PINs and disburses currency. Also see Electronic Banking.

ATM Access Fee
A fee that is charged in addition to the individual account fees for an account holder to gain access to the ATM system. Can be a monthly, weekly or annual fee.

Atomistic Test
A test aiming to assess participant reaction to individual elements of a product or concept. This contrasts to holistic testing which looks at a product or concept as a whole.

Attachment of Property
Where a warrant of execution is issued against movable or immovable property pursuant to the granting of judgment. A Sheriff may proceed to attach and remove certain property, in satisfaction of the judgment debt, with a view to selling such property in execution.

Attorney
Another term for lawyer. A person trained in legal matters and certified to provide legal advice or to represent others in a court of law.

Attribute
A column in a database that contains the same kind of information for each record. For example, an Age field contains the age of each person in the database. An attribute can be either independent or dependent. Also known as Field and Variable.

Attribute Analysis
A technique for the development of a list of characteristics.

Attribute Strength
The measure of the ability of an individual scorecard attribute to discriminate between any two outcomes, usually good and bad.

Attrition
Reasons why customers abandon or close an account. Attrition can be voluntary (a consumer requests the closure of an account), or involuntary (the institution initiates closure of the account).

Attrition Models
Scoring models designed to predict account closure or cessation.

Attrition Rate
The opposite of Retention Rate. The percentage of customers this year who are no longer buying next year. Also see Churn.

Audiotex
A voice processing capability that enables callers to automatically access pre-recorded announcements.

Audit Trail
A trail which refers to features and measures allowing for processing traceability for controlling purposes.

Audit Trail
Record of events which can be used to trace the activities and usage of a system in computer/network systems. This material is crucial when tracking down successful attackers, determining how the attacks happened, and being able to use this evidence in a court of law.

Augmentation
Any process that augments the known Good and Bad accounts in a sample by the Inferred Good and Bad accounts from the applications that were rejected. Also known as Reject Inference.

Authentication
The process of verifying the identity of a person or process within the guidelines of a specific security policy. A fundamental part of many Cryptography systems.

Authorisation Approval Card
The numerical code designated by the issuer, given to a sales transaction as verification that the sale has been authorised.

Authorisation Centre
A department that electronically communicates a merchant's request for authorisation on credit card transactions to the cardholder's bank and transmits such authorisation to the merchant via electronic equipment or by voice authorisation.

Authorisation Code
A code generated with the transaction data to confirm authorisation.

Authorisation Only
A function to hold funds on a credit card without actually capturing those funds.

Authorisations
The process whereby the credit card issuer accepts, refers or declines, a cardholder transaction.

Authorised User
Someone that has been given permission to use a person`s credit card account.

Auto Greeting
Agent’s pre-recorded greeting that plays automatically when a call arrives.

Auto Representment
Chargebacks that were automatically resolved by the bank on the merchant's behalf without their knowledge or intervention. Chargebacks are generally caused by credit not issued and transaction not being authorized.

Auto Sexing
A computer process for finding the sex and appending titles, (e.g. Mr., Ms., Mrs., Dr., Prof.) to a file of names.

Automated Attendant
A voice processing capability that automates the attendant function. The system prompts callers to respond to choices (e.g., press one for this, two for that) and then coordinates with the ACD to send callers to specific destinations. This function can reside in an on-site system or in the network.

Automated Bill Payment
The crediting of funds from a consumer's account to a company's account to facilitate the payment of a consumer's bill or obligation.

Automated Call Handling
The process whereby incoming calls are answered and handled by a pre-recorded script, using specialist computer and telecoms equipment. Also see ACH.

Automated Clearing House
Abbreviated as ACH. A regional organisation used by member banks to electronically transfer funds between members. Also see Internet Cheque Acceptance or Direct Payment.

Automated Fingerprint Identification System
A system where a person has his/her finger image compared with existing personal data by placing a finger on a scanner, or by the scanning of inked paper impressions. Also known as AFIS.

Automated Purchasing System
A networked software system that links a company`s Web site to other vendors whose offerings and prices have been pre-approved.

Automated Teller Machine (ATM)
An unattended terminal that has electronic capability, accepts PINs and disburses currency. See Electronic Banking.

Automatic Call Distributor
This is used in call centres for routing calls to available agents, holding overflow calls, giving and taking messages and generating reports. Also see ACD and Dynamic Answer.

Automatic Number Identification
A system that identifies the telephone number of the person calling you. Also see ANI.

Automatic Payment
A contract authorising periodic withdrawals to be made from a person`s bank account to pay bills.

Automatic Stay
An injunction that stops a lawsuit, foreclosure, garnishment and all collection activity against a debtor the moment a bankruptcy petition is filed.

Automatic Transfer
A contract that moves money at certain specified times, often monthly, from a bank account into a non-interest account for the payment of cheques.

Automatic Variable
A variable that is automatically defined by htmSQL and which contains htmSQL processing information.

Auxiliary Work State
An agent work state that is typically not associated with handling telephone calls. When agents are in auxiliary mode, they will not receive inbound calls.

Available Credit
The monetary amount of a person’s unused available credit. In bankcards, it is the difference between the average outstanding balance and the cardholder’s pre-approved credit limit.

Available State
Agents who are signed on to the ACD and waiting for calls to arrive.

Available Time
The total time that an agent or agent group is waiting for calls to arrive, for a given time period.

Average
The general term used to represent or summarise the relevant features of a set of values. The arithmetic mean is often used as a measure of average, but the median and the mode can also be used to summarise a set of values.

Average Daily Balance
A method of computing the figure on which the finance charge for credit card financing will be based. The account balances for each day in the billing period are totalled and divided by the number of days in the period.

Average Handle Time (AHT)
The sum of average talk time and average after-call work for a specified time period.

Average Shortfall
An alternative way of describing the magnitude of the "tail" (or an extreme value level) of a probability distribution. For example, rather than stating what level of loss could occur with 1% likelihood. A statement of average shortfall would be the average of all potential losses that fall below a 1% likelihood.

Average Ticket
The average size of a merchant bankcard transaction. This is generally used in pricing decisions and calculations.

Average Time to Abandonment
The average time that callers wait in a queue before abandoning. The calculation considers only calls that are abandoned.

Avoidance Power
The power of the court to invalidate certain transactions that were undertaken by a debtor prior to filing for bankruptcy. It is generally intended to reverse transfer of property that favours one creditor over another.

AVS
Acronym for Address Verification Service. A service provided through merchant services in which the merchant verifies the cardholder's address. Primarily used by mail/telephone order merchants to combat fraud. It is not a guarantee that a transaction is valid.

Awareness
In marketing terms, a measure of the knowledge a person has about an object or idea. There two main measures of awareness are spontaneous (or unaided) and prompted (or aided) awareness.