According to Section 3 of Law No 2019/021 of 24 December 2019 to lay down some rules governing credit activities in the banking and Micro-Finance sectors in Cameroon, the following definitions are applicable;
- Client/Member: natural or legal person holding an account in the books of a credit provider operating within the Republic of Cameroon.
- Co-obligor: debtor who, under a contract or the law, is liable to pay a debt jointly or severally with others.
- Rescheduled Joan: change in respect of the initial conditions of a loan, to reduce the monthly instalment amount by extending the loan duration.
- Restructured loan: loan for which there is an addendum to the original contractual clauses or a deed of novation following a negotiation of all the original conditions based on the financial standing of the borrower.
- Borrower: natural or legal person that is the beneficiary of a loan transaction.
- Credit institution: approved institution that habitually engages in banking transactions.
- Microfinance institution (MFI): approved entity engaged in microfinance activities within the national territory.
- Credit providers: banks, financial institutions, microfinance institutions and any other body duly authorized to engage in credit and microfinance activities.
- Personal bankruptcy: sanction pronounced within the context of property adjustment or liquidation procedure, against a natural person or legal person managers, traders or any person entered on the Trade and Real Property Register.
- Ban on credit: sanction pronounced against a borrower in the event of Intentional loan default.
- Moratorium: deadline granted a borrower whose loan repayment becomes difficult or impossible due to circumstances beyond his/her control.
- Bad faith: behaviour of borrowers that intentionally fake their own
- insolvency.
- Loan default: failure to pay all or part of a debt arising from a credit transaction entered into with a credit institution.
- Signature commitment operation: deed whereby a person acting for a consideration makes or undertakes to make funds available to another or, in the interest of the latter, makes an undertaking such as a surety, a bond, a guarantee or any other security.
- Credit transaction: deed whereby a credit institution, acting for a
- consideration, makes or undertakes to make advanced payments to a natural or legal person, or makes a signature commitment in the interest of the latter.
- Lender: credit institution that has granted a loan to a borrower.
- Surety: assigning to a creditor, an asset, a set of assets or property, to secure the performance of an obligation or set of obligations, irrespective of the legal nature of such obligations and, particularly, be they current or future, determined, determinable or unconditional and of a fixed or fluctuating amount.
- Overall effective rate (TEG): annual rate, proportional to the rate of the period calculated in arrears and expressed as a percentage with accuracy to two decimal places.
- Attrition rate: overall effective rate which, at the time the loan is granted, is 33% above the average overall effective rate applied in the previous semester by credit institutions for similar.