This Express Capital Funding glossary defines the 45 terms that appear in personal loan agreements, disclosures, and every guide on this site, each in plain English of two to four sentences. Express Capital Funding publishes it because an agreement you can read is an agreement you can judge, and every linkable definition below has its own anchor for citing and sharing.
On This Page
A
Amortization
The repayment structure in which each fixed payment covers that month's interest plus a slice of principal, so the balance falls on a schedule and reaches exactly zero at the final payment. Amortization is why a personal loan ends by design while revolving balances end only by discipline.
Annual Percentage Rate (APR)
The all-in yearly price of borrowing, interest plus mandatory fees, expressed as one percentage. Federal law requires it on every consumer credit offer precisely so borrowers can compare products without decoding fee structures. Always compare personal loan offers on APR, never on headline interest rates.
Autopay
An authorization letting the lender draw each scheduled payment automatically from your bank account. Some lenders discount the rate slightly for enrolling. On a personal loan, it prevents forgotten due dates but requires keeping the funded account healthy on payment days.
B
Balance
The amount still owed on a loan at a given moment: original principal, minus principal repaid, plus any unpaid accrued interest or fees. The amortization table on our calculator shows the balance after every scheduled payment.
Borrower
The person who signs the loan agreement and is legally responsible for repayment. On a single-applicant personal loan, one borrower carries the whole obligation regardless of who benefits from the funds.
C
Cash Advance
A withdrawal of cash against a credit card's limit. Interest typically accrues immediately at a higher rate with no grace period, which is why a fixed personal loan usually beats a cash advance for any need lasting longer than a few weeks.
Collateral
Property pledged to secure a loan, which the lender can claim after default. Personal loans in the Express Capital Funding range are unsecured, meaning no collateral is pledged and your car or home is never at stake from the loan itself.
Cosigner
A second person who signs the agreement and becomes equally responsible for repayment, typically to strengthen an application. Missed payments damage both credit files. The network's request form is single-applicant; joint products exist at some direct lenders.
Credit Bureau
A company that compiles credit histories, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are the three national bureaus. Personal loan lenders report payment behavior to bureaus and buy reports from them during underwriting.
Credit Report
Your file at a bureau: accounts, balances, payment history, inquiries, and public records. Federal law entitles you to free copies; reviewing them for errors before any personal loan request is the highest-yield preparation most borrowers skip.
Credit Score
A number summarizing credit-report data to predict repayment likelihood. Payment history and utilization weigh heaviest in common models. Scores shape pricing more than approval in this network, since several lenders weigh income and banking history alongside them.
Credit Utilization
The share of your revolving limits currently in use. Below thirty percent reads as healthy in most models; paying cards down is the fastest legitimate score lever, and consolidating card balances with an installment loan lowers utilization mechanically.
D
Debt Consolidation
Replacing several debts with one new loan, one payment, one rate, one end date. It saves money when the new APR beats the blended rate of the debts it retires; our debt consolidation page walks the full arithmetic.
Debt-to-Income Ratio (DTI)
Monthly debt obligations divided by gross monthly income. Lenders read lower DTI as room to repay; a request that would push DTI past a lender's ceiling is among the most common quiet decline reasons.
Default
The state a loan enters after payments have been missed beyond the agreement's threshold. Consequences include acceleration of the balance, collections, and severe credit damage. Contacting the lender before a missed payment usually preserves options that default forecloses.
Deferred Interest
A promotional structure, common on store and medical credit cards, where interest accrues silently during a zero-percent window and applies retroactively to the original balance if any amount remains at the deadline. A fixed personal loan can never do this.
Delinquency
A payment past due but short of default. Lenders typically report delinquencies to bureaus after thirty days, and late fees usually apply sooner. One promptly cured delinquency is recoverable; a pattern reprices your future borrowing.
Disbursement
The lender's transfer of loan proceeds to your bank account after signing, commonly as soon as the next business day in this network. Your bank's processing speed sets the final leg.
Disclosure
The written statement of a loan's terms, APR, payment, schedule, fees, and total of payments, that federal law requires before you sign. Reading the disclosure against the calculator is the ninety-second habit this site teaches on nearly every page.
F
Fixed Rate
An interest rate that never changes across the loan's life, producing identical payments and a printable schedule. Every personal loan in the Express Capital Funding network is fixed-rate.
G
Grace Period
A window after the due date during which a payment can arrive without a late fee or negative reporting, where the agreement provides one. Length varies by lender and state; the agreement is the authority.
H
Hard Inquiry
A credit check tied to an actual credit application, visible to other lenders and capable of trimming a score by a few points temporarily. Final underwriting may involve one; the initial network match typically does not.
I
Installment Loan
Any loan repaid in scheduled equal payments over a set term, the structural family personal loans belong to, as opposed to revolving credit. The predictability of installments is the core argument for the structure at small-dollar scale.
Interest
The price of borrowed money, accruing on the outstanding balance. Early amortized payments carry more interest because the balance is larger; extra principal payments early in the term therefore save the most.
L
Late Fee
A charge applied when a payment misses its due date beyond any grace period, flat or percentage-based by lender and state law, and stated in the agreement before you sign.
Lender
The licensed company that underwrites, funds, and services a loan and holds the repayment relationship. Express Capital Funding is not a lender; the capital express funding service connects borrowers to lenders and exits at the connection.
Loan Agreement
The signed contract governing a loan: amount, APR, schedule, fees, prepayment terms, and remedies. It outranks every webpage, advertisement, and conversation, including this glossary, wherever they differ.
Loan Term
The scheduled length of a loan, three to thirty-six months across this network. Longer terms lower the payment and raise total interest; term choice moves total cost more than most APR differences borrowers agonize over.
M
Maturity Date
The date the final scheduled payment falls due and the loan, if paid as agreed, reaches zero. Fixed maturity is the feature that separates a personal loan from open-ended credit.
Minimum Payment
The smallest amount a revolving account accepts each cycle, engineered to keep balances alive for years. Installment loans have no minimum-payment concept: the fixed payment is the payment.
O
Origination Fee
A charge some lenders deduct from proceeds at funding, commonly one to eight percent where present. A $2,000 loan with a five percent fee delivers $1,900, so size requests to net the planned figure.
P
Payoff Amount
The exact sum that retires a loan today: remaining principal plus accrued interest through the payoff date. Request it from the lender in writing before sending an early final payment; it differs slightly from the statement balance.
Prepayment Penalty
A fee some agreements charge for early payoff. Uncommon in this network, but the agreement is the authority; confirming its absence turns every early payment into pure savings.
Principal
The amount borrowed, before interest and fees. Every payment splits between interest and principal; only the principal portion shrinks the balance, which the amortization table makes visible month by month.
Proceeds
The funds actually delivered to your account at disbursement, principal minus any origination fee. The calculator's you-receive line exists so this number surprises nobody.
R
Refinancing
Replacing an existing loan with a new one at better terms, often after credit improvement. Rebuilding borrowers who finish a first loan on time frequently refinance later obligations at meaningfully lower APRs.
Representative Example
A fully worked sample loan, amount, APR, payment, total, that regulation and honesty both require when discussing rates. The Express Capital Funding example appears on the rates page and marks every figure as an estimate, not an offer.
Revolving Credit
Credit you can draw, repay, and redraw against a limit, credit cards being the canonical case. Flexible by design, and open-ended by the same design; the contrast with installment structure decides most borrowing choices on this site.
S
Secured Loan
A loan backed by collateral, which typically lowers the rate and puts the pledged property at risk. Auto-title products are secured; every personal loan in this network is not.
Soft Inquiry
A credit check that does not touch your score and is invisible to other lenders, used for prequalification and initial matching. Checking your options through a soft-inquiry process costs your file nothing.
T
Total of Payments
Every dollar scheduled to leave your account across the loan's life, the real price tag, disclosed by law before signing. Borrowers who compare offers on this line cannot be fooled by payment-only marketing.
Truth in Lending Act (TILA)
The federal law requiring standardized disclosure of APR, payment schedule, and total of payments on consumer credit, the legal foundation of every comparison technique this site teaches.
U
Underwriting
A lender's evaluation of a request, income, obligations, banking history, credit data, to decide whether and at what price to lend. Each network lender underwrites by its own model, which is the argument for one request reaching several.
Unsecured Loan
A loan backed only by your promise to repay, no collateral pledged. Personal loans in this range are unsecured: pricing runs higher than secured equivalents, and your property is never at stake from the loan itself.
V
Variable Rate
An interest rate that moves with a market index, changing your payment over time. No personal loan in the Express Capital Funding network uses one; at small-dollar scale, fixed certainty is the correct structure.
Using This Glossary With a Real Document
The intended workflow is side-by-side: open your written offer or agreement in one window and this page in another, and resolve every unfamiliar term before signing anything. The five definitions that decide most personal loan comparisons are APR, total of payments, origination fee, prepayment penalty, and amortization, fluency in just those five makes any offer the express capital funding network produces fully legible, and the calculator turns that fluency into verified numbers in ninety seconds. Where a term in your capital express funding document is missing here, send it through the contact page; reader questions are how this glossary grows, and a definition that would have helped you will help the next borrower sooner if you ask. Plain language is a capital express funding commitment across every page of this site, and reading any offer beside this reference is a capital express funding habit worth keeping for life, and this reference exists so the industry's vocabulary can never be used against the people it lends to.
Reading the Vocabulary as Three Families
The 45 terms above organize into three families, and seeing the families makes the whole vocabulary easier to hold. The price family, APR, interest, origination fee, total of payments, late fee, prepayment penalty, answers what a personal loan costs, and every member ultimately rolls up into the APR and total-of-payments lines on a disclosure. The structure family, amortization, principal, balance, loan term, maturity date, fixed rate, installment loan, answers how a personal loan behaves over time, and it is the family that separates installment borrowing from the revolving-credit and minimum-payment vocabulary that governs cards. The process family, underwriting, soft and hard inquiries, disbursement, proceeds, disclosure, loan agreement, answers what happens between an Express Capital Funding personal loan request and funded money. A borrower who can place any unfamiliar term into its family already half-understands it, which is the quiet trick behind reading agreements quickly.
The Five-Minute Fluency Path
If one sitting is all the time available before an offer arrives, spend it in this order. Read APR and total of payments together, they are the comparison toolkit, and the express capital funding position across this entire site is that those two lines decide every personal loan choice worth making. Add origination fee and proceeds, so the you-receive number never surprises you. Add amortization and prepayment penalty, so the repayment years are as legible as the signing day. Then test yourself against the representative example on the rates page: if every figure in it now reads as obvious, the capital express funding curriculum has done its job, and the remaining terms above are reference material for the specific documents that cross your table. Vocabulary is the cheapest protection in consumer finance, this page is where a personal loan stops being written in someone else's language.