T&E
Abbreviation for Travel and Entertainment.

T&E Card
Travel and Entertainment card issued by a private, non-bank company which deals directly with the cardholder and merchant and which generally requires payment in full monthly.

T&E Merchant
An airline, car-rental company, lodging, or restaurant establishment whose primary function is to provide travel/entertainment-related services.

T-Test
This is a test applied to the individual coefficients of the regression equation. The coefficient divided by its standard error has a t-distribution. Also known as Student’s t-Test. Type of loan, such as car, instalment, business, etc.

Tag
In HTML terms a `tag` is used for marking-up text in various ways so that it is formatted in a Web document.

Tamper Evident
Methods that reveal any unauthorised physical access to sensitive material, such as devices where keys are stored.

Tape
Magnetic tape is 1/2 inch wide, and holds about 300,000 customer records. Tape is the cheapest way to store information, but the data is hard to get at. Tape is used for backup and for sending information from one computer to another.

TAPI
Abbreviation for Telephony Applications Programming Interface. CTI protocol developed by Microsoft and Intel.

Target Limit
The maximum amount that a lender is prepared to extend to a customer across all of their product holdings. There is no tolerance in this limit.

Target Marketing
A marketing strategy aimed at a particular individual or group rather than to mass media.

TCP/IP
The system networks use to communicate with each other on the Internet. It stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol.

Teaser Rate
A very low, but very temporary, short-term introductory interest rate often associated with an adjustable rate mortgage loan. See Introductory Rate.

Teaser Rate
Often called the introductory rate and is a lower interest rate offered to entice customers to switch credit cards or lenders.

Technical Review
A document that summarises and highlights the information observed during the scorecard development process.

Telemarketing
The process of using telephones to communicate with prospects or customers. Telemarketing can be either inbound or outbound calls, for example, it can be a customer phoning in to a toll free number. Telemarketing activity is variously conducted by in-house staff or sourced to external telemarketing companies.

Telematics
The science of combining telecommunications and computers to control the electronic and mechanical functions in an automobile.

Telephone Banking
Banking via a telephone facility. This can be either carried out with a physical person or via an interactive voice response system (IVR).

Telephone Bill Payment
A service that permits a customer to pay bills electronically. The customer gives a corporation the authority to debit his or her account for a specific amount or within a specified range of amounts.

Telephony Applications Programming Interface (TAPI
CTI protocol developed by Microsoft and Intel.

Telephony Space
The market for telephone services.

Term
The period of time during which loan payments are made. At the end of the loan term, the loan must be paid in full.

Term Loan
A loan intended for medium-term or long-term financing to supply cash to purchase fixed assets such as machinery, land or buildings or to renovate business premises.

Terminal
A device that looks like a television screen with a keyboard which enables someone to enter data into the computer, and receive data from it which you see on the screen. The alternative to a terminal is a PC.

Terminal Based
A system that captures card transactions and holds them until settlement.

Terminal Nodes
The nodes on the bottom-most branches or the final nodes in a decision tree analysis. Also known as Leaves.

Terminated Merchant File (TMF)
A file listing the names of merchants and their principals whose bankcard relationships have been terminated for some reason by an acquirer. Operated jointly by VISA and MasterCard.

Test Database
A duplicate or companion database where programmers can write and test new software prior to introducing the programmes into the production database.

Test Digit
A number, between 00-99, randomly assigned to an account. The purpose of this is to enable the division of accounts in a portfolio in an unbiased manner, allowing for statistically valid Champion-Challenger testing.

Test Digit Group
A collection of random digits, e.g. 00-04, would be 5% of the portfolios accounts.

Testator
Person appointed to execute a valid will.

Thick Consolidator
One of four models of Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment (EBPP). The biller sends all of its billing data to a central service provider that consolidates electronic bills from different billers so that the consumer has a single site of access for viewing billing information and making payments electronically. Other models include: Biller Direct, Thin Consolidator and Customer Consolidation.

Thin Consolidator
One of four models of electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP). The biller sends summary billing data to a central service provider, that consolidates electronic bills from different billers so that the customer has a single site of access for viewing billing information and making payments electronically. The customer may access full billing data through the billers web site. Other models include: Biller Direct, Thick Consolidator and Customer Consolidation.

Third Generation
Similar to first generation and second generation, and is used to describe the next generation of technology. Also see First Generation, Next Generation and Second Generation.

Third Party Payment
A payment to merchants via another account.

Third-Party Processing
Processing of transactions by service providers acting under contract to card issuers or acquirers.

Thread
An article posted to an Internet newsgroup, together with all the follow-up articles, the follow-ups to follow-ups, and so on.

Three C’s of Credit
This refers to Character, Capacity and Collateral, which were typically used to assess applications prior to credit scoring.

Through The Door Population (TTD)
All of the applicants for any particular credit or financial product.

Ticket
Another name for the sales slip or its 'monetary value' that results when a credit card purchase is made.

Tiered Interest
An arrangement where a higher balance attracts greater interest. If the balance drops, a lower interest rate applies.

Tiger
A Census system for mapping the entire United States by Blocks, complete with roads and other landmarks. Customers and prospects can be shown on a map using geodemographic codes to represent where they are.

Tilting Principle
The acceleration/deceleration of actions on accounts in a credit process based on a set of variable risk indicators.

Time Frame
The time period from which the development sample is extracted. This is typically a 12-month period. Also known as Sampling Time Frame.

Time Series Analysis
The analysis of a sequence of measurements made over a large number of time intervals. Time is usually the dominating dimension of the data.

Time-Line Model
A means of illustrating where different activities occur in relation to each other over time.

Title Search
An examination of official real estate records to determine if any problems (such as defects or liens) exist that may affect the title (ownership) of a home.

TMF
Abbreviation for Terminated Merchant File. A file listing the names of merchants and their principals whose bankcard relationships have been terminated for some reason by an acquirer. Operated jointly by VISA and MasterCard.

Total
An entire quantity; the sum of a number of items.

Total Assets
The sum of current assets, net fixed assets, investments in affiliates, intangible assets and other non-current assets.

Total Capitalisation
The sum of short-term debt, long-term debt and shareowner’s equity.

Total Expense Ratio
The percentage of monthly debt payments compared to the total before-tax income.

Total Liabilities
The sum of current liabilities, long-term debt, non-current deferred income tax liability, other long-term liabilities and post retirement liabilities.

Total Odds
The product of the Information Odds and the Population Odds. Also known as Overall Odds.

Total of Payments
The sum of all instalments on a loan.

Total Sales Price
The total payments plus down payment and any other charges.

Total Shareowner Equity
The sum of issued capital stock, earned surplus and other equity-related accounts, minus the cost of treasury stock.

Total Short-Term Debt
The sum of technical overdraft, short-term borrowings and current portion of long-term debt.

Trace
An operational function dedicated to finding debtors who have absconded without leaving forwarding address or contact point.

Tracking
The business function of producing regular management reports, in order to control the scorecards and lending functions. Also known as Monitoring.

Trade
A credit account that can include any of the following: paid, zero balance, and/or past due balances.

Trade Line
Information found on a consumer’s credit profile that is reported to a credit bureau by a creditor to offer information about an account relationship (payment habits, usage of credit, etc.).

Training Sample
A part of a population used to estimate or train a model. See Development Sample.

Tranche
A group of accounts opened in the same time period. Alternatively known as a Cohort.

Transaction
The act between an accountholder and a merchant or an acquirer that results in the generation of a transaction receipt.

Transaction Currency
The currency in which a transaction is originally completed.

Transaction Date
The actual date on which a transaction occurs. Used in recording and tracking transactions.

Transaction Fees
Service costs charged to a merchant on a per-transaction basis.

Transaction Receipt
An electronic or paper record of a transaction, generated at the Point-of-Transaction.

Transactional Ad
An online ad that uses pull-down menus and data boxes to let users search or shop for goods without leaving a Web site.

Transactional Marketing
An approach that focuses upon one-off exchanges with consumers.

Transactors
Card account-holders who pay off their balance in full each month.

Transformation
The use of a logarithm to transform multiplications into additions.

Transformation to Linearity
Transformations allow for changes to be made to all the values of a variable by using some mathematical operation. A transformation to linearity is a transformation of a response variable, or independent variable, or both, which produces an approximate linear relationship between the variables.

Transformed Variable
An independent variable to which a continuous, monotonic function has been applied. Continuous independent variables are transformed when their distributions are highly non-normal.

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

Transition Matrix
Gives the likelihood of an account, in any one state at one point in time, moving into any other state at a second point in time.

Translation
The process of adding a number of points to each attribute, in order to make all of the scores positive.

Travel and Entertainment Card (T&E Card)
Travel and entertainment credit cards, lines of credit, or unknown account types with terms that can reflect either revolving or instalment loans (such as, oil company cards, American Express, or carte blanche).

Treasury Bill
A marketable U.S. government debt security with a maturity of less than one year.

Trojan Horse Attack
Using a computer program that appears to have a legitimate purpose, such as a game, to capture sensitive information on infected computers, such as cryptographic keys.

Trustee
An agent of the court who manages the debtor`s property for the benefit of the creditors.

Truth in Lending Act
US Federal law enacted in 1969 requiring lenders to disclose key terms in extension of credit to borrowers in consumer credit applications. The act is part of the Consumer Credit Protection Act.

TTD Population
Abbreviation for Through The Door population.

Turnover
The total value of all sales in an organisation.