Banking, lending and enterprise technology glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms used across financial operations, lending, insurance and enterprise technology — with links to where each concept appears in WEFI.
A
- Arrangement
- In banking systems, an arrangement is the contract between an institution and a customer for a specific product — for example a loan, deposit or overdraft — including its terms, conditions and lifecycle from opening to closure. WEFI EDOS operates arrangements from configurable product definitions.
- Asset finance
- Asset finance is lending in which the financed asset — such as a vehicle, machine or equipment — secures the loan. The lender's risk depends on the asset's value, condition and location as well as the borrower's ability to repay. WEFI Sahara supports asset-backed lending and collateral operations.
B
- Bancassurance
- Bancassurance is the distribution of insurance products by a bank to its customers, usually through a partnership with one or more insurers and often alongside credit products such as mortgages and vehicle loans. See the bancassurance solution.
- BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation)
- BPMN is an international standard notation for modelling business processes as diagrams of tasks, decisions, events and flows. Process engines can execute BPMN models directly, so the diagram becomes the running process. WEFI Runtime executes business processes from explicit process models.
- Business process automation (BPA)
- Business process automation is the use of software to execute multi-step business processes — routing work, applying rules, calling systems and recording outcomes — so they run consistently with less manual handling. Business process automation is a capability of WEFI Runtime.
C
- Charge-off (write-off)
- A charge-off or write-off is the accounting recognition that a loan is unlikely to be repaid, removing it from performing assets. Recovery efforts may continue after charge-off, and the decision normally requires approval at a defined authority level. WEFI Loan OS governs charge-off approval in recovery cases.
- Collateral management
- Collateral management is the registration, valuation, monitoring and release of assets pledged to secure credit, including insurance, liens and revaluation over the life of the facility. Collateral is a WEFI EDOS capability used by Loan OS and Sahara.
- Collections
- Collections is the process of recovering overdue repayments from borrowers while a loan is still active — contacting customers, agreeing arrangements and escalating according to defined rules. See loan servicing and collections.
- Core banking system
- A core banking system is the central system of record that maintains customer accounts, balances and transactions for a bank, typically processing deposits, loans and payments and running end-of-day processing. WEFI is designed to work alongside existing core banking systems.
- Covenant
- A covenant is a condition in a credit agreement that the borrower must meet — for example maintaining a financial ratio or providing statements by a deadline. Breaches can trigger reviews, waivers or remedies. WEFI Loan OS supports covenant monitoring and waivers.
- Credit committee
- A credit committee is a group of authorised officers that reviews and decides credit applications above individual delegated limits, recording its decision and any conditions. Credit committee cases are part of WEFI Loan OS.
D
- Days past due (DPD)
- Days past due is the number of days a loan repayment is overdue. Lenders group loans into DPD buckets (for example 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 days) to drive collections strategy, provisioning and reporting.
- Decision management
- Decision management is the practice of defining business decisions — eligibility, pricing, approval authority — as explicit, versioned rules evaluated by software, separate from application code, so they can be governed, tested and audited. WEFI Policy provides decision management.
- Digital lending
- Digital lending is the origination, approval and servicing of loans through digital channels and automated processes rather than paper forms and manual handoffs. See lending and credit management.
- Disbursement
- Disbursement is the release of approved loan funds to the borrower or a designated account, at which point the loan is booked and repayment obligations begin.
F
- Financial operating system
- A financial operating system is a set of shared financial capabilities — customer and party data, product configuration, arrangements, accounting, collateral and limits — that business applications and processes use. Unlike a traditional core banking replacement, it can coexist with an existing core. WEFI EDOS is a financial operating system.
G
- General ledger (GL)
- The general ledger is the complete record of an organisation's financial transactions, organised by a chart of accounts, from which financial statements are produced.
- Guarantor
- A guarantor is a person or entity that commits to repay a loan if the borrower does not. Guarantors are common in SACCO and microfinance lending, where members guarantee each other's loans against their savings.
H
- Human-in-the-loop (HITL)
- Human-in-the-loop describes a process design in which outputs from automated or AI steps are reviewed, accepted or overridden by an authorised person before they take effect. WEFI AI routes outputs for human review within processes.
I
- IFRS 9
- IFRS 9 is the international accounting standard for financial instruments. Its expected-credit-loss model requires lenders to classify loans into stages according to changes in credit risk and to provision accordingly.
- IndexNow
- IndexNow is an open protocol that lets websites notify participating search engines when pages are added, updated or removed, so they can be re-crawled sooner.
K
- KYC (Know Your Customer)
- KYC is the process of verifying a customer's identity and understanding their risk profile before and during a financial relationship, as required by anti-money-laundering regulation.
L
- Limits
- Credit limits cap the exposure an institution will take to a customer, group of related customers, product or sector. Facilities are checked against available limits before approval and drawdown.
- Loan management system (LMS)
- A loan management system services loans after disbursement: repayment schedules, payments, interest and fees, account changes, arrears, collections, recovery and closure. Read LOS vs LMS.
- Loan origination system (LOS)
- A loan origination system manages a loan from application to disbursement: capturing the application, verifying the applicant, assessing credit, deciding, documenting and releasing funds. WEFI Loan OS covers origination through recovery.
M
- Microfinance institution (MFI)
- A microfinance institution provides small loans and other financial services to individuals and small businesses, often including group lending where members share responsibility for repayment. See WEFI for microfinance institutions.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP)
- The Model Context Protocol is an open protocol for connecting AI models and agents to external tools and data sources through a standard interface.
P
- Product factory
- A product factory is the part of a banking system where financial products — their pricing, conditions, fees and rules — are defined through configuration, so new products can be launched without code changes. Product configuration is part of WEFI EDOS.
R
- Recovery
- Recovery is the process of recovering amounts owed on defaulted loans — through settlement, collateral realisation, guarantors or legal action — after normal collections have failed.
- Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
- Retrieval-augmented generation is a technique in which an AI model retrieves relevant documents from an authorised knowledge source and uses them to ground its answer, reducing unsupported responses.
S
- SACCO
- A SACCO (savings and credit cooperative) is a member-owned financial cooperative in which members save regularly, hold share capital and borrow, typically against their savings and with guarantors. In Kenya, deposit-taking SACCOs are supervised by SASRA. See WEFI for SACCOs.
- State machine
- A state machine defines the states a business entity can be in — for example draft, submitted, approved, disbursed — and the permitted transitions between them, so changes follow rules and can be audited.
- System of record
- A system of record is the authoritative source for a particular type of data, such as customer accounts or balances. Other systems read from it or send changes to it rather than keeping independent copies. How WEFI connects to systems of record.
W
- Workflow orchestration
- Workflow orchestration coordinates the steps of a business process across people and systems — sequencing tasks, waiting for events, handling errors and recording each step — from a single process definition. WEFI Runtime orchestrates business processes.
Talk to WEFI about your operations
Request a demonstration or discuss your requirements with our team.