Nomenclature can be a minor stumbling block for credit risk workers with different backgrounds and environments. A typical example would be those graphs and tables that go by various short-hand names, meaningful internally but maybe not to outsiders.

For the most technical stuff I prefer the language of statistics, which is likely to be the most universal. Most are comfortable with “probability” and “odds”, but moving on to “Gini coefficient” there already turn out to be several names, plus variations in the technical details. Where these issues seem relevant to Ozrisk, we will tidy them up.

Of particular use is the nomenclature of the statistical area called “survival analysis”. This has useful technical concepts like “longitudinal” (and “cross-sectional”), and “hazard”, which we will cover in due course, at the same time linking them with the various banking industry terms that might apply. However, no term does quite the job of “hazard”, so is would be good Ozrisk practice to stay with the universal statistical nomenclature in this case. This would keep our discourse as accessible as possible to fellow professionals such as actuaries. BTW, actuaries and demographers use survival analysis for the estimation and study of mortality (or sickness) hazard and the composition of populations of people, work which is closely related to default analytics.

On the other hand, nomenclature like “roll rates” seems to be so widespread in the banking industry that one would prefer it to statistical equivalents (“transition probabilities”).

In discussions that follow, please advise in cases where you know of alternative nomenclature, so that we can keep discussions as inclusive

as possible.