Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the lending, regulatory, and platform terms used across Ustawi.
PAR30 / PAR90 (Portfolio at Risk)
The percentage of a loan portfolio's outstanding balance that has a payment more than 30 (or 90) days overdue. It is the standard industry measure of portfolio quality: a rising PAR30 signals emerging delinquency before loans are fully lost.
DPD (Days Past Due)
The number of calendar days since a loan repayment was due and remains unpaid. DPD is the trigger value that drives Ustawi's dunning ladder (SMS → call → visit → notice → legal) and feeds directly into PAR and BOT classification calculations.
KYC (Know Your Customer)
The process of verifying a client's identity and assessing their risk profile before or during onboarding, typically using national ID, phone number, and address details. KYC data feeds sanctions/PEP screening under AML.
AML (Anti-Money Laundering)
The set of controls, screening, and reporting obligations designed to prevent a financial institution from being used to launder illicit funds, including sanctions/PEP screening and Suspicious Transaction Report filing.
STR (Suspicious Transaction Report)
A mandatory filing to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) when a transaction is reasonably suspected of being linked to money laundering or another predicate offense. Under Tanzania's AML Act, reporting persons must notify the FIU within 24 hours of forming that suspicion, filed via the goAML platform.
EIR / APR (Effective/Annual Percentage Rate)
The true annualized cost of a loan including interest and fees, disclosed to the borrower in the Key Facts Statement before signing so the cost of credit is transparent and comparable across products.
BOT Loan Classification (5-band)
Bank of Tanzania's standard categorization of loans by risk: Current, Especially Mentioned, Substandard, Doubtful, and Loss — each carrying a different provisioning requirement.
Provisioning
The accounting practice of setting aside funds to cover expected losses on a loan portfolio, calculated as a percentage of outstanding balance that increases with a loan's classification band.
VICOBA (Village Community Bank / Kikundi cha Kuweka na Kukopa)
A member-owned savings-and-internal-lending circle common across Tanzania, organized into fixed-length cycles with regular meetings, member shares, a social fund, and a share-out at cycle end.
VSLA (Village Savings and Loan Association)
A savings-group model closely related to VICOBA, built around the same cycle-meetings-shares-share-out structure; Ustawi treats the two under one workflow.
Mishahara / Check-off (Salary Lending)
Loans repaid via direct deduction from a borrower's salary under a formal agreement (MOU) with their employer, reconciled against each payroll cycle.
Dhamana (Collateral / Guarantee)
An asset or a guarantor's commitment pledged against a loan to secure the lender's position; Ustawi tracks its perfection status as a disbursement requirement gate.
Amana (Trust / Deposit)
Funds held by an institution on a client's or group's behalf, such as VICOBA member savings held in the group's fund ledger.
Rehani (Pledge / Mortgage)
A specific form of collateral where an asset (often property) is formally pledged as security for a loan, subject to the same recovery-notice gate before any repossession.
Maker-Checker / Dual-Control
A security control requiring one person to submit ("make") a sensitive action and a second, different person to approve ("check") it before it takes effect — used to prevent a single individual from executing high-risk actions alone.
Idempotency Key
A unique identifier attached to an action (like a mobile cash collection) so that if the same request is sent more than once — for example when a field agent's phone regains signal and retries a sync — the system safely recognizes the duplicate and records the payment only once.
Tenant (Multi-Tenancy)
In Ustawi, a "tenant" is one institution's fully isolated instance of the platform — its own data, branches, staff, and configuration, kept separate from every other tenant on the same underlying platform.
Branch Scoping
A row-level security rule that limits a staff member's visibility and actions to the branch(es) they are assigned to, failing closed (showing nothing) rather than failing open (showing everything) when no assignment exists.
MFI (Microfinance Institution)
An institution that provides small loans and related financial services to individuals and micro-enterprises typically underserved by commercial banks. In Tanzania, non-deposit-taking MFIs are licensed by the Bank of Tanzania as Tier 2 microfinance service providers.
SACCO (Savings and Credit Cooperative Society)
A member-owned cooperative that mobilizes members' savings and lends back to them. In Tanzania SACCOs sit at Tier 3 under the Microfinance Act 2018 and are supervised under their own regulation (GN No. 675 of 2019).
PEP (Politically Exposed Person)
An individual entrusted with a prominent public function, whose position carries a higher risk of involvement in bribery or corruption. AML screening flags PEP matches for enhanced due diligence before onboarding or lending.
goAML
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime reporting platform used by Tanzania's Financial Intelligence Unit for electronic submission of Suspicious Transaction Reports. Ustawi exports STRs in the goAML format.
CRB (Credit Reference Bureau)
A bureau that holds borrowers' credit histories. A CRB check during underwriting shows a borrower's existing obligations and repayment behaviour, feeding the approval decision.
EFD / VFD (Electronic / Virtual Fiscal Device)
The Tanzania Revenue Authority's mechanism for issuing tax-compliant fiscal receipts. A VFD is the software-based equivalent of a physical EFD; Ustawi fiscalizes qualifying loan transactions through the TRA VFD service.
NPL (Non-Performing Loan)
A loan on which the borrower has stopped making scheduled payments for a defined period (commonly 90+ days past due), moving it into the impaired classification bands and raising the provision required against it.
Write-off
The accounting recognition that a loan is no longer expected to be recovered, posted against the loan-loss provision. It is an approved, audit-logged action in Ustawi; recovery activity may still continue afterward depending on policy.
Loan Restructuring
A formal change to a live loan's terms — typically its repayment schedule — done as a controlled, approved action that preserves the original terms in the loan's history rather than overwriting them.
Promise-to-Pay (PTP)
A borrower's recorded commitment to repay an overdue amount by a specific date, captured during collections; it can adjust the dunning cadence, and a broken PTP resumes escalation.
DSR (Debt Service Ratio) / Affordability
The share of a borrower's income committed to debt repayments, used in the affordability assessment to gate whether a proposed loan is serviceable before approval.
Key Facts Statement
A standardized pre-signing disclosure showing a loan's principal, schedule, fees and true cost (EIR/APR), so a borrower can see and compare the real cost of credit before agreeing.
Sync Exception
A field-collected payment that could not reconcile cleanly during offline sync and needs manual review. In Ustawi these are the money-authority alerts surfaced in the portal for resolution.
General Ledger (GL)
The double-entry accounting core that records every financial event. In Ustawi, lending, collections and insurance events post to the GL automatically, keeping the trial balance and reports consistent with the loan book.
BOT (Bank of Tanzania)
Tanzania's central bank and the regulator for banks and microfinance service providers, whose reporting and prudential requirements Ustawi's compliance and reporting apps are built to support.
NIDA (National Identification Authority)
The Tanzanian authority that issues national IDs. NIDA-based identity verification supports KYC at borrower onboarding.
PDPA (Personal Data Protection Act, 2022)
Tanzania's data-protection law governing how personal data is collected, processed and stored, overseen by the Personal Data Protection Commission. It frames how customer and borrower data must be handled on the platform.
BRELA
The Business Registrations and Licensing Agency — Tanzania's company registrar. A BRELA registration number identifies a legally registered company (Ustawi is operated by Click Up Company Limited, BRELA No. 163520974).
Frequently asked questions
What does PAR30 mean?
PAR30 is the percentage of your loan portfolio's outstanding balance that has a payment more than 30 days overdue — the standard early-warning measure of portfolio quality.
What is the difference between VICOBA and a group loan?
A VICOBA is a member-owned savings circle that lends its members' own pooled savings internally; a group loan is joint-liability lending from your institution to a formed group. Ustawi supports both.
What is an idempotency key in simple terms?
A unique tag on an action so that if it is sent twice — say a field agent's phone retries a sync — the payment is still recorded only once.
What does dhamana mean in lending?
Dhamana is collateral or a guarantee pledged against a loan; Ustawi tracks its perfection status as a gate before disbursement.