Researchers find optimal way to pay off student loans

After graduating or leaving college, many students face a difficult choice: Try to pay off their student loans as fast as possible to save on interest, or enroll in an income-based repayment plan, which offers affordable ...

US grabs lead over China in clean energy race

The United States has regained the lead in the clean energy race, investing $48 billion last year to surpass China, which held the world's top spending spot since 2009, said a study Wednesday.

The downside -- and surprising upside - of microcredit

Microcredit, which involves giving small loans to very small businesses in an effort to promote entrepreneurship, has been widely touted as a way to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth. A multitude of both non- and ...

A good story can trump a bad credit score in peer-to-peer lending

These days a bad credit score will get you turned away by a bank, but if you tell a good story about that score, you can improve your chances of getting a microloan from a peer-to-peer lender, according to new research from ...

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Loan

A loan is a type of debt. Like all debt instruments, a loan entails the redistribution of financial assets over time, between the lender and the borrower.

In a loan, the borrower initially receives or borrows an amount of money, called the principal, from the lender, and is obligated to pay back or repay an equal amount of money to the lender at a later time. Typically, the money is paid back in regular installments, or partial repayments; in an annuity, each installment is the same amount.

The loan is generally provided at a cost, referred to as interest on the debt, which provides an incentive for the lender to engage in the loan. In a legal loan, each of these obligations and restrictions is enforced by contract, which can also place the borrower under additional restrictions known as loan covenants. Although this article focuses on monetary loans, in practice any material object might be lent.

Acting as a provider of loans is one of the principal tasks for financial institutions. For other institutions, issuing of debt contracts such as bonds is a typical source of funding.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA