Hacker Fraudster
This type of criminal enters fictitious details in the required fields on a website and provides a generated credit card number. See Professional Fraudster and Opportunistic Fraudster.

Hacking
Unauthorised access to computer files.

Handling Time
The number of calls received and handled by agents or peripheral equipment. Handled calls do not include calls that abandon or receive engaged signals.

Handwriting Recognition
A software-enabled ability of computers to recognise handwritten letters, numbers and symbols.

Hard Bounce E-mail
Hard bounce E-mail is permanently bounced back to the sender because the address is invalid. See Bounce E-mail or Soft Bounce E-mail.

Hard Copy
The original document of a transaction, such as sales drafts, credit slips, etc. See Original Draft.

Hardware
Computers, disks, tape drives, printers, and other peripherals that are plugged into computers.

Hawthorne Effect
A psychological phenomenon whereby people (customers) act differently when they are being studied.

Headquarters / Head Office
The main office of a retail chain through which all communication, supply orders and funding takes place.

Hedge
An investment or position taken to reduce the risk of adverse movements or events that occur beyond the control of the investor. Normally, a hedge consists of a protecting position in a related investment.

Heir
The person or persons that stand to benefit from an estate.

HELOC
Acronym for ‘Home Equity Line of Credit’, which is a personal loan, with either a fixed term or revolving facility, that is secured by a second charge on the customers home.

Help Desk
A term that generally refers to a call centre set up to handle queries about product installation, usage or problems. The term is most often used in the context of computer software and hardware support centres.

Herstatt Risk
The Herstatt risk phenomenon can occur with parties involved in settling foreign currency transactions across different time zones. For example, Bank A may agree to deliver GBP in London at 12:00 p.m. in exchange for Bank B delivering USD in New York at 12:00 p.m. on the same day. Although the times appear the same, the New York delivery comes later due to differences in time zones, this leaves Bank A exposed. Named after Bankhaus Herstatt who defaulted on a number of currency transactions when the bank failed in 1974.

Heteroscedasticity
Refers to situations in which the variability of the model residuals is not constant. If heteroscedasticity is observed, it may often be removed by transforming the outcome variable using a square root or a logarithm.

Heuristics
Refers to common-sense rules drawn from experience. As opposed to algorithmic programming (which is based on mathematically provable procedures), heuristic programming is characterised by programs that are self-learning and get better with experience.

Hidden Field
In an HTML form, a field whose name and value are not visible in the Web browser.

Hidden Layer
A group of internal nodes inside a Neural Network, which it uses to build a model.

High Balance
The monetary amount of credit utilised on a credit line. Also see High Credit.

High Balance Charge
A fee assessed when the credit limit on an open-end account is exceeded.

High Credit
The highest outstanding monetary amount ever attained by the cardholder (account holder). See High Balance.

High Obsolescence
Goods or equipment that are constantly improved or replaced with newer versions have a high level of obsolescence. Computers and mobile telephones are good examples. See Planned Obsolescence.

High Side Overrides
Applications that are turned down, even though their scores are at the cut-off or higher.

Historical Reports
Reports that track call centre and agent performance over a period of time. Historical reports are generated by ACDs, third party ACD software packages, and peripherals such as VRUs and Call Detail Recording Systems. The amount of history that a system can store varies by system.

Hit
Each time a Web page is "touched" or "accessed" by a user, a hit is recorded by the browser.

HNW
High Net Worth individuals.

Hold-out Sample
A small percentage of the development sample, (typically 20%), that is excluded from the scoring model development, so that it can be used to test the statistical validity of the final scorecard. Also known as Validation Sample.

Hologram
A laser-created photograph that creates a three-dimensional image; used as an anti-counterfeiting measure on bankcards.

Holographic Foil
The foil used to carry embossed holographic images.

Home Banking
A method of conducting banking transactions from a home environment utilising the internet medium. Typically customers can transfer funds, pay bills and make account inquiries.

Home Equity
The monetary value of a property held by the property owner, not including any credit amount extended.

Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)
A type of personal loan, with either a fixed term or revolving facility, which is secured by a second charge on the customer’s home.

Home Improvement Loan
Credit extended to a mortgagor with the intended use being to upgrade the property.

Home Loan Registration
This is the process whereby ownership of a property is transferred from the seller to the buyer via a deed of transfer. The home loan is secured at the Deeds Office as a mortgage bond.

Home Page
The first page which is displayed when you go to a Web page either by hyperlink or by going to a specified address.

Home Page
The first page or front page of a Web site.

Host Computer
The central computer in a data communications system that provides the primary data processing functions, such as computation and database access.

Hot Card
A card account on which excessive use is occurring often an indication that the card (or account number) has been stolen.

House File
The organisations own file of active and former customers.

Household Income
The total income of all members of a household.

Householding
A process by which all people and their accounts are grouped by the house that they live in so that they only receive one letter per house in a promotion.

HTML
Abbreviation for Hypertext Mark-Up Language. The language used to write pages for the World Wide Web. This language lets the text include codes that define fonts, layout, embedded graphics, and hypertext links.

HTTP
Known as Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The way in which World Wide Web pages are transferred over the Internet.

HTTP Tunnelling
A method of transferring data between clients and servers that otherwise could not exchange data because of applet security restrictions, firewalls, or other security restrictions on a network.

HTTPS
Abbreviation for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secured. A variant of HTTP that encrypts messages for security.

HUD
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

HUD Special Information Booklet
This is a booklet published by HUD that describes important terms and provides information about the home buying and mortgage loan process.

Hybrid Card
A smart card that combines two different technologies such as magnetic stripe and chip.

Hyperlink
A hypertext connection that can take you to another document or another part of the same document. On the World Wide Web, hyperlinks appear as text or pictures that are highlighted. To follow a hyperlink, click the highlighted material. See Active Hyperlink and Link.

Hypertext
A system of writing and displaying text and graphics that enables the data to be linked in multiple ways.

Hypertext Mark-Up Language (HTML)
The language used to write pages for the World Wide Web. This language lets the text include codes that define fonts, layout, embedded graphics, and hypertext links.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
The way in which World Wide Web pages are transferred over the Internet.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secured (HTTPS)
A variant of HTTP that encrypts messages for security.