Debt recovery and collections glossary
Short definitions of the terms used in recovery operations.
Updated 2026-10-20
- Days past due (DPD)
- The number of days since the oldest unpaid instalment became due.
- Delinquency bucket
- A band of days past due (for example 31–60) used to group loans for reporting and treatment.
- Arrears
- The overdue amount currently owed on a loan, excluding amounts not yet due.
- Roll rate
- The share of loans that move from one delinquency bucket to a worse one over a period.
- Cure rate
- The share of delinquent loans that return to current status.
- Promise to pay (PTP)
- A borrower's commitment to pay a stated amount on a stated date, tracked until kept or broken.
- Repayment arrangement
- An agreed plan to repay an overdue balance in instalments, usually after approval.
- Settlement
- An agreement to resolve a debt, often for a reduced lump sum, after approval.
- Write-off
- An accounting decision to treat a balance as unrecoverable; it does not extinguish the debt by itself.
- Maker-checker
- A control requiring a different authorised person to approve what another person proposed.
- Ledger
- The chronological record of debits and credits from which loan balances are derived.
- Idempotency key
- A unique identifier that makes repeating a request safe because it can only take effect once.
- Reconciliation
- Comparing two records of the same money, such as provider payments and the ledger, and resolving differences.
- Legal hold
- A restriction preventing records from being deleted or altered while they may be needed for legal reasons.
- DSAR
- Data-subject access request: a person's request to access, correct or erase their personal data.
- Multi-tenant
- A single software installation serving many separate organisations whose data is isolated from each other.
- Tenant isolation
- Controls ensuring one organisation cannot read or change another organisation's data.
- Cost to collect
- Recovery expenses and commissions divided by the amount recovered.