Metro 2 Account Type Code 3A: Auto Lease

Specification

Code	3A
Meaning	Auto Lease
Field	Account Type (Field 15)
Record	Base Segment
Length / position	2 chars · 84–85
Category	Secured and Collateralized Installment
CRRG reference	CRRG Exhibits 1 & 2 (Account Type Codes)

A lease, not a loan. The consumer never builds equity in the vehicle, and the amount financed is the capitalized cost less the residual value, not the price of the car.
Reported as Portfolio Type I because the payment obligation behaves like an installment: a fixed amount, a fixed number of months, a scheduled end date.
3A is specifically an AUTO lease. A lease of anything else (equipment, furniture, appliances) is Account Type 13, and a residential lease is Account Type 29.
Does NOT mean an auto loan. Account Type 00 is the financed purchase of a vehicle where the consumer takes title. Coding a retail installment contract as 3A misstates who owns the collateral.
An early lease termination, a lease buyout, and a normal maturity are three different endings and produce different Account Status values, but none of them change the Account Type.

1A captive finance arm of an automaker reports a 36-month closed-end lease on a new SUV with a fixed monthly payment and a stated residual.
2A bank that buys lease paper from a franchised dealer furnishes the lease under its own subscriber code for the full term.
3A credit union reports a 24-month lease that ends with the consumer returning the vehicle and owing a disposition fee.
4A leasing company reports a lease that terminated early after the consumer bought out the residual, closing the tradeline at zero balance.
5A lessor reports a lease that went to charge-off after the vehicle was repossessed and sold at auction for less than the payoff.

Report the total of the scheduled lease payments (not the vehicle's sticker price) as the Original Loan Amount, and the remaining lease obligation as the Current Balance.
Populate Terms Duration with the lease term in months and Scheduled Monthly Payment with the contractual lease payment. An installment-type account with no scheduled payment is a validation failure.
Do not report a Credit Limit. A lease has no revolving line behind it.
Do not switch the Account Type to 00 when a consumer exercises a buyout. Close the lease tradeline and, if you also finance the buyout, open a separate 00 tradeline for the new loan.
Report an excess-wear or excess-mileage balance that survives the lease return on the same tradeline, not as a new account.

A file can be structurally valid and still be wrong. These are the cross-field conditions Account Type Code 3A has to satisfy.

Portfolio Type must be I (Installment). An auto lease reported with Portfolio Type R or C contradicts Appendix A and is a portfolio-type mismatch.
Portfolio Type I obliges you to populate Terms Duration (the lease term in months) and Scheduled Monthly Payment while the account is open.
Terms Frequency is normally M (Monthly). A lease with Terms Frequency blank or set to a revolving-style value contradicts the fixed-payment structure.
Credit Limit should be blank or zero. Installment accounts do not carry a limit, and a populated limit on Portfolio Type I triggers balance-versus-limit edits that cannot be satisfied.
On a repossession, Date of First Delinquency must be the month the account first went delinquent and never caught up, not the repossession date.
If the lease is a joint obligation with a co-lessee, the co-lessee ships in a J1 or J2 segment with the appropriate ECOA code, not as a second Base Segment.