TSlower Than Monthly
Terms Frequency Code T: Tri-annually
Terms Frequency Code T means "Tri-annually". A payment is due three times a year, every four months. Three out of every four reporting cycles carry no payment obligation. It is reported in Terms Frequency (Field 28) of the Base Segment, 1 character at position 194.
Specification
| Code | T |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Tri-annually |
| Field | Terms Frequency (Field 28) |
| Record | Base Segment |
| Length / position | 1 char · 194–194 |
| Category | Slower Than Monthly |
| CRRG reference | CRRG Base Segment field definition, Terms Frequency |
What Terms Frequency Code T means
- T means three payments a year at four-month intervals. It is the least-used code in the set and is worth double-checking whenever it appears.
- The name is a frequent source of confusion. T is three times per year, not once every three years. If the intent is every three months, the code is Q.
- Under T, three consecutive monthly records normally show no payment received. That is contractually correct, and a validation rule that assumes a monthly obligation will flag all of them.
- A single missed payment leaves four months unpaid, which will age past the ninety-day threshold in Payment History Profile terms from one missed obligation.
- T appears in seasonal, academic-term, and some agricultural arrangements where income arrives three times a year.
- T does NOT change Scheduled Monthly Payment from a monthly figure. The monthly equivalent is one quarter of the tri-annual payment.
When to report T
- 1An education-related lender aligns payments to three academic terms a year.
- 2An agricultural lender structures repayment around three harvest or sale events.
- 3A specialty lender reports a loan repaid at four-month intervals matching a borrower's seasonal income.
- 4A membership or dues arrangement billed three times a year is furnished under Portfolio Type O.
- 5A furnisher suppresses internal past-due logic for the three no-obligation months between tri-annual due dates.
Reporting rules
- Populate Scheduled Monthly Payment with one quarter of the tri-annual payment.
- Verify that T is really what the contract says rather than a transposition of Q. Given how rarely T is correct, treat every occurrence as worth confirming.
- Do not report delinquency in the three months of each interval where nothing is due.
- Express Terms Duration as a count of tri-annual payments and document it, because a reader will otherwise assume months.
- Keep filing a monthly record throughout the interval.
Codes and fields that must agree
A file can be structurally valid and still be wrong. These are the cross-field conditions Terms Frequency Code T has to satisfy.
- Scheduled Monthly Payment is a MONTHLY figure and equals one quarter of the tri-annual payment. The full tri-annual amount in that field overstates monthly debt by a factor of four.
- Terms Duration counts tri-annual payments, so 009 is three years. This is the code where a month-versus-payment-count confusion produces the largest distortion after Y.
- Pairs with Portfolio Type I and occasionally O. T on a revolving or mortgage portfolio type is a contradiction.
- Actual Payment Amount is zero in three of every four cycles by design.
- One missed tri-annual payment leaves four months unpaid and will age past ninety days in the Payment History Profile from a single missed obligation. Decide and document how that is represented.
- Because T is so rare, an unexpected T in an extract is more often a mapping defect than a real contract term, and is worth catching before the file ships.
Common errors involving T
Vocabulary
Keep browsing
- All 11 terms frequency codes — the full set with categories and cross-field rules.
- Metro 2 codes cheat sheet — every CRRG code set on one page.
- Terms Frequency field reference — position, length, and validation rules.
- Metro 2 format reference
See Terms Frequency Code T in your own file
Drop a .dat file into the free in-browser viewer and inspect every record carrying T. No signup, and nothing is uploaded — your file stays on your device.