E-business
Derived from ‘electronic business’ it is the conduct of business electronically, especially using the Internet and digital television. It involves buying, selling, servicing customers and collaborating with business partners.

E-card
An electronic version of a greeting card sent to your email address. In most cases, you must visit a Web site in order to see it.

E-Cash
Electronic cash is a payment mechanism designed for the Internet. It is electronic money that can be passed along from person to person like cash. It is anonymous like cash, and has value immediately.

E-Cheque
The electronic equivalent of a paper cheque.

E-Commerce
Also known as Electronic Commerce. The transacting of business electronically rather than via paper.

E-mail
E-mail or Electronic Mail is the exchange of computer-stored messages by telecommunication. E-mail messages are usually encoded in ASCII text.

E-pay
Also known as Electronic Bill Payment. An alternative to paper cheques for paying bills. Consumers can use PCs, telephones or ATMs to send electronic instructions to their bank to withdraw funds from their accounts and pay merchants. Payments may be made either electronically or by a paper cheque issued by the bill payment provider.

Early Adopter
A person that uses a new form of technology from the onset of its development.

Early Mover
A company that strives to gain a first-mover advantage.

Earned Income
Earned income comes from wages, salary or business profits.

Earnings per Share
EPS is a measure of the profitability of a company.

EBA
Acronym for the European Banking Association.

eBay
Known as the world`s largest online marketplace, eBay is a company with an online auction site that enables people to buy and sell goods/services on a local, national and international basis.

EBCDIC
A protocol for putting data on a tape. All IBM mainframes use EBCDIC. Most others use ASCII.

EBP
Abbreviation for Electronic Bill Presentment, the electronic delivery of vendor requests for payment.

EC
Acronym for the European Commission.

ECA
Abbreviation for Electronic Cheque Acceptance. A system that captures banking information off a paper cheque and converts it into an electronic item processed through the Automated Clearing House network.

ECB
Acronym for the European Central Bank.

ECBS
Acronym for the European Committee for Banking Standards.

ECOA
A U.S. federal law requiring lenders to give businesses and consumers equal access to credit. This is the basic legislation in the United States that addresses credit scoring and has been amended from time to time.

ECOA Codes
Specific codes placed on a credit profile that indicate the contractual liability.

Economic and Monetary Union
The economic and monetary union is the name given to the process of harmonising the economic and monetary policies of EU Member States and the euro.

Economic Capital
The aggregate capital required as a cushion for the company's overall risk of unexpected loss.

Economic Exposure
Any type of risk arising from movements in real exchange rates.

Economic Growth
The rate of change in output from one year to the next.

Economic Income
The cash flow of a project or company plus the changes in its present value.

Economic Indicators
Statistics that help determine how the economy is faring. Examples of these include the Consumer Price Index and unemployment rates.

Economic Value Added
Also known as EVA. This is calculated by using net income, plus adjustments for any accounting distortions, less the cost of the capital used to generate the income.

ECR
An Electronic Cash Register. A system, which functions most efficiently and effectively for large businesses with many registers in single or multiple locations.

ECU
Acronym for European Currency Unit.

EDC
Abbreviation for Electronic Draft Capture. A point-of-sale device that reads information encoded in the bankcard's magnetic stripe, performs authorisation functions, stores transaction data, and batches and transmits that data to the acquirer for processing. The stored transactions are used to create settlement files and transaction reports

EDI
Abbreviation for Electronic Data Interchange. A direct exchange of information electronically, from one firm's computer to another firm's computer in a structured format.

Edit Check
A software process whereby data to be entered into a database is checked for logic before it goes into the database.

EEPROM
Acronym for Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory. EEPROM is a chip used in computers and other devices to store data.

Efficient Collectables
A classification of accounts that identifies account holders who will respond to collections activity.

Efficient Market Theory
States that given full access to all information, the market’s current price for a share is the best estimate of future returns from that share. The faster share prices respond to information, the more efficient the particular market is considered to be.

EFT/POS
Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) at the Point-of -Sale (POS). A payment option, which allows consumers to pay for purchases by transferring funds directly from their accounts to a merchant's accounts.

Elderly
Age 62 or older.

Electron
Electron is a Visa debit card. Anything bought with an Electron card has to be authorised electronically, which means the transaction is more secure. A debit card is suitable for someone opening their first bank account, as they cannot be overdrawn without permission.

Electronic Banking
A method of banking making use of infrastructure other than a physical branch or outlet. This includes banking via the Internet or computer facility, Automated Teller Machine or telephone.

Electronic Bill Delivery
A bill delivery system offered by Visa Interactive that allows banks to send consumers their bills through their personal computers. This system now allows consumers to transfer funds through their bank to the billing agent itself.

Electronic Bill Payment (E-pay)
An alternative to paper cheques for paying bills. Consumers can use PCs, telephones or ATMs to send electronic instructions to their bank to withdraw funds from their accounts and pay merchants. Payments may be made either electronically or by a paper cheque issued by the bill payment provider.

Electronic Bill Presentment (EBP)
The electronic delivery of vendor requests for payment. Vendors send consumers their bills via PCs or telephones.

Electronic Cash
A system that is used to transfer cash over the Internet to pay for goods and services. Also known as e-cash.

Electronic Cash Register (ECR)
A system, which functions most efficiently and effectively for large businesses with many registers in single or multiple locations. An ECR provides a direct, computer-to-computer linkup.

Electronic Cheque Acceptance (ECA)
A system that captures banking information off a paper cheque and converts it into an electronic item processed through the Automated Clearing House network. With ECA, cheques are processed similarly to credit cards, and the paper cheque is returned to the consumer at the Point-of-Sale.

Electronic Commerce (E-commerce)
The transacting of business electronically rather than via paper.

Electronic Data Capture Terminal
Also referred to as Electronic Draft Capture terminal. A point-of-sale device that reads information encoded in the bankcard's magnetic stripe, performs authorisation functions, stores transaction data, and batches and transmits that data to the acquirer for processing.

Electronic Data Interchange
EDI is a system that companies use to exchange business information electronically, virtually eliminating paperwork.

Electronic Data Processing
Data processing is normally performed by electronic devices. Also known as EDP.

Electronic Draft Capture Terminal
Also referred to as Electronic Data Capture terminal. A point-of-sale device that reads information encoded in the bankcard's magnetic stripe, performs authorisation functions, stores transaction data, and batches and transmits that data to the acquirer for processing. The stored transactions are used to create settlement files and transaction reports.

Electronic Financial Services
Financial services that are provided via electronic delivery channels (e.g. PCs, telephones, screen phones and ATMs). These services may be transaction and/or information oriented and may be provided by bank and non-bank providers.

Electronic Funds Transfer
Abbreviated EFT. A system that transfers funds through electronic messages instead of by traditional means, such as cash or cheques.

Electronic Mail
E-mail is a system where a computer user can exchange messages with other computer users via a communications network.

Electronic Point-of-Sale
A point-of-sale merchant with electronic equipment for pricing and recording transactions, but not necessarily incorporating functions for electronic funds transfer. See Point-of-Sale.

Electronic Purse
Smart card stored value program.

Electronic Signature
A paperless way to sign a document using an electronic symbol and provides transaction authentication, data integrity and non-denial.

Electronic Wallet
Software loaded onto a personal computer that contains a customer`s payment card information, digital certificates and cryptographic keys.

Embedded Hyperlink
The name for a hyperlink that is incorporated into a line of text.

Embedding
The process of placing the chip module in the cavity of a plastic card. The embedded module is electrically tested and encoded.

Embossing
Characters in relief on the front surface of a card.

EMEA
Europe, Middle East, Africa.

Emergent Models of Change
Emphasise that in uncertain conditions, it is likely that the results of a project will be affected by unknown factors, and that planning has only a limited effect on the outcome.

Emerging Markets
The financial markets of developing economies.

Emoluments Attachment
Where a Plaintiff has obtained judgment, he can make application for an order deducting a percentage of the Defendant’s salary or wages for a certain time period or until the judgment debt is paid off.

Empirical
Relying upon or gained from experiment or observation; capable of proof or verification by means of experiment or observation.

Empirically Derived Credit System
An empirically derived credit system is a credit scoring system, which evaluates an applicant's creditworthiness primarily by assigning points (or by using a comparable basis for assigning weights) to key attributes describing the applicant and other aspects of the transaction. See Judgemental System and Pertinent Element.

Empty Nesters
Descriptive term for families where children have already left, or are about to leave, the family home.

EMV
Europay, MasterCard and Visa have agreed to develop the Global specifications for describing the physical, electrical and logical features of smart cards.

Encoding
Recording electronic information on to a magnetic stripe.

Encryption
A computerised fraud prevention technique in which data transmitted over a network is scrambled before transmission and unscrambled on receipt. See South African Fraud Prevention Service and Fraud.

Encryption
The scrambling of data so that it becomes difficult to decipher.

Encumbered
A property owned by one party on which a second party reserves the right to make a valid claim, e.g. a bank's holding of a home mortgage encumbers property.

End User
In information technology, the term end user is used to distinguish the person for whom a hardware or software product is designed from the developers, installers, and servicers of the product.

Endorse
To sign the back of a cheque in order to cash it.

Enhancement
Appending demographic or lifestyle data to a list. See Overlayed Data and Data Enhancement.

Enterprise Reporting
Enterprise reporting centralises report production, storage and distribution in powerful report servers, and utilises the Internet to securely distribute reports to users anywhere in the world. Enterprise reporting rose out of the need to unify information distribution within large corporations.

Enterprise Risk and Performance Portal
A single gateway to personalised financial risk and return information needed to make timely, informed business decisions.

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM)
ERM defines a confederation of vendors who offer market risk and, frequently, credit risk management software products. An ERM solution typically comprises proprietary data extraction, transformation, and loading utilities, a normalised data model that supports a multi-purpose data warehouse, market risk and credit exposure calculation engines, and a collection of analytics and standard reports.

Entity Basis Presentation
Net sales, operating income and assets are assigned to the geographic area where the legal entity is located.

Entity-Relationship Modelling
Entity-relationship modelling is a logical design technique that describes the microscopic relationships among data elements and seeks to eliminate data redundancy. This discipline is beneficial to transaction processing because it makes transactions very simple and deterministic.

Enveloping
A process whereby documents of the same type or purpose are grouped together, bound, and sent to the same destination into an electronic envelope. This is done by an electronic data interchange management software function.

EPROM
Erasable Programmable Random Access Memory.

EPS
Synonym for Earnings per Share. EPS is a measure of the profitability of a company.

Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA)
A U.S. federal law requiring lenders to give businesses and consumers equal access to credit. This is the basic legislation in the United States that addresses credit scoring and has been amended from time to time.

Equity
The amount of loan principal paid, which represents the degree of ownership.

Equity Bonds
Equity Bonds are comparable to unit trust vehicles, excepting certain taxation differences. Equity Bonds can be switched between certain funds without attracting tax, making them attractive for individuals wanting to actively manage their investments.

Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the study of improving personal workspace and making it more comfortable to use e.g. the shape of a keyboard or the distance of a computer monitor.

ERM
Abbreviation for Enterprise Risk Management. ERM defines a confederation of vendors who offer market risk and, frequently, credit risk management software products.

ERP
Abbreviation for Enterprise Resource Planning Systems.

Error Rate
Either the number of defective transactions or the number of defective steps in a transaction.

Escrow
A payment, usually included in mortgage payments, held by the lender to meet property taxes and insurance premiums for property securing the loan.

Estate
The financial or physical property owned by a person whilst they are alive. On death, the estate is apportioned to the named beneficiaries.

Estate Duty
Taxes levied on the estate of a deceased person.

Estate Law
That area of the law governing wills, estates and the distribution of deceased estates.

Estimator
The functionality within certain account management systems, whereby credit issuers can run estimators that will forecast the impact of implementing challenger strategies. This enables organisations to be able to forecast the impact of new strategies, both financially and operationally.

Ethernet
A Local Area Network (LAN) with a high bandwidth designed for PCs. These connections generally provide quicker results than the Internet.  

Ethics
A standards of conduct or moral judgement.

EU
The fifteen member-state European Union.

Euclidean Distance
The measure of geometrical distance between two observations as measured by some function of the numerical values of the variables in the two observations.

Euro
The currency used by the European Union (EU) member states.

Eurobond
A medium or long-term interest-bearing bond available in the international capital markets. Eurobonds are only issued by major lenders such as large multinational companies, public bodies or governments.

Eurocard and Eurocheque
Eurocard and Eurocheque are part of the Europay system. Both were started to offer a service that consumers could use across Europe. Eurocheque and the card that goes with it - the Eurocheque card - are now widely accepted. You can use a Eurocard to take out cash at ATMs showing the EC logo.

Europay
Europay International SA is the European business partner of MasterCard. The company was formed after Eurocard and Eurocheque joined together in 1992. It operates the Eurocard, MasterCard, Eurocheque, Maestro and Cirrus brands in Europe.

European Banking Association
Abbreviated as EBA.

European Central Bank
Also known as ECB.

European Currency Unit
The official unit of account of the European Monetary System and is a combination of the currencies from the 12 European Community countries: Deutsche mark, French franc, British pound sterling, Irish pound, Italian lira, Belgian franc, Dutch guilder, Luxembourg franc, Greek drachma, Spanish peseta, Portuguese escudo and Danish krona.

EVA
Acronym for Economic Value Added. This is calculated by using net income, plus adjustments for any accounting distortions, less the cost of the capital used to generate the income.

Event Driven Programs
Database programs, which are triggered to produce output, (usually communications), based on events. For example: a birthday letter, anniversary letter, thank you letter, etc.

Event Risk
The risk that the value of a security or other instrument will change due to an unanticipated event in the market environment or change in the regulatory environment.

Ex-ante Provisions
Credit loss provisions that reflect the statistical likelihood that credit losses will occur before any exposure is identified as non-performing.

Examination in Chief
The questioning of a witness by the person/attorney who has brought them to court to give evidence in support of their case.

Exception
A policy decision not to employ the scorecard in making decisions in particular circumstances.

Exception File
A file of account numbers for which the issuer has predetermined an authorisation response that a member accesses on-line.

Excess
Credit card accounts where the current balance exceeds the declared limit. Also called Over-limit.

Excess Kurtosis
Kurtosis measures the "fatness" of the tails of a distribution. Excess kurtosis means that distribution has fatter tails than a normal distribution. Fat tails means there is a higher than normal probability of big positive and negative returns realisations. See Kurtosis and Fat Tails.

Excess Return
Return or extra reward for assuming risks. See Risk Premium.

Exchange Coefficient
A measure of the scorecard’s power or the strength of an individual characteristic. Also see Scorecard Power.

Exchange Rate
The rate at which one currency can be traded for another.

Exchange Rate Mechanism
Abbreviated as ERM.

Exclusion Score
A specific score assigned to an account, making it behaviour score exclusion. For example, new accounts, bankrupts, deceased and charge-offs all typically receive exclusion scores.

Exclusions
Those accounts that should not be included in the development sample as either the applicant or the account behaviour patterns are atypical. Examples include deceased accounts, staff, lost and stolen.

Execution
Carrying out/imposing the decision of the court on the Defendant.

Executive Summary
A brief summary of the key points of a more detailed report or study.

Executor Testamentary
This is the term for the person appointed by the testator to administer an estate and ensure that all final wishes are carried out and the terms of the will adhered to.

Expert Scorecards
Expert scorecards are also called Generic Scorecards. Expert Scorecards are not built on the organisations portfolio but rather using the scorecard developer’s knowledge of the industry the organisation operates in. Once completed, a scorecard will be delivered that will use information from the application form to produce a score.

Expert System
Computer software that can perform at or near the level of a human expert and also provide explanations. An expert system can be used to model financial risks, but is based on expert knowledge rather than data or statistics.

Expert Witness
A person who is able to use his special skill, training, or expertise, in an area to assist the court in reaching a conclusion.

Expiration Date
The date embossed on a bankcard, beyond which the card becomes invalid.

Exploratory Data Analysis
The use of graphical and descriptive statistical techniques to learn about the structure of a data set.

Exposure Time
The period that an account has been on the credit grantors books. It is the amount of time that the account has been exposed to the possibility of becoming delinquent.

Extend Credit
The granting of credit in any form, including, but not limited to, (a) credit granted in addition to any existing credit or credit limit; (b) credit granted pursuant to an open-end credit plan; (c) the refinancing or other renewal of credit, including the issuance of a new credit card in place of an expiring credit card or in substitution for an existing credit card; (d) the consolidation of two or more obligations; or (e) the continuance of existing credit without any special effort to collect

eXtensible Markup Language
Also known as XML. eXtensible Markup Language is a standard for creating markup languages that describe the structure of data.

Extract
A set of data, which normally resides on the operational systems and is uploaded into a data warehouse.

Extranet
An extension of a company`s intranet onto the Internet that permits certain customers, suppliers and colleagues working in the field to obtain exclusive access to information and services through the Web.

Extrapolative
This is when the predicted outcome lies outside of the range of cases encountered at the development time. This is the direct opposite to Interpolative.