WSub-Monthly Cadence
Terms Frequency Code W: Weekly
Terms Frequency Code W means "Weekly". A payment is contractually due every week. Four or five payments therefore fall inside a single monthly reporting cycle, which the format has no way to represent individually. It is reported in Terms Frequency (Field 28) of the Base Segment, 1 character at position 194.
Specification
| Code | W |
|---|---|
| Meaning | Weekly |
| Field | Terms Frequency (Field 28) |
| Record | Base Segment |
| Length / position | 1 char · 194–194 |
| Category | Sub-Monthly Cadence |
| CRRG reference | CRRG Base Segment field definition, Terms Frequency |
What Terms Frequency Code W means
- W means fifty-two payments a year. Terms Duration under W is a count of weekly payments, so 052 is one year, not fifty-two months.
- This is the sharpest case of the format's core assumption breaking down. Metro 2 produces one record and one Payment History Profile position per month, so the four or five weekly payments inside that month collapse into a single current-or-delinquent judgement.
- The guidance in the in-repo source does not state how a partially paid month should be judged under W. It does not say whether missing one of four weekly payments makes the account past due, nor how to age a weekly delinquency into the thirty-sixty-ninety buckets the Payment History Profile uses. That silence is real, and this page will not fill it with a rule that has no source.
- W is genuinely common in short-term and small-dollar lending, in some payroll-aligned consumer lending, and in certain commercial working-capital products.
- W does NOT mean the consumer pays weekly by preference. It means the contract requires it. Voluntary extra payments on a monthly loan do not change the frequency.
- W does NOT change the fact that Scheduled Monthly Payment remains a monthly figure. A weekly payment must be converted before it goes in that field.
When to report W
- 1A small-dollar lender reports a twenty-week installment loan repaid every Friday, with Terms Duration expressed as a count of weekly payments.
- 2A commercial working-capital lender furnishes a daily-or-weekly remittance product on the closest available weekly cadence.
- 3A consumer finance company aligns payments to a weekly pay cycle for a borrower paid every Friday.
- 4A lender reports a weekly-pay auto loan originated at a buy-here-pay-here dealership.
- 5A furnisher converts a weekly obligation into a monthly-equivalent scheduled payment for reporting while the underlying contract stays weekly.
Reporting rules
- Convert the weekly payment to a monthly equivalent before populating Scheduled Monthly Payment. A weekly payment multiplied by roughly 4.33 is the standard conversion; multiplying by four understates the obligation.
- Populate Terms Duration as a count of weekly payments and be consistent, because a reader who assumes months will misread the loan by a factor of four.
- Decide a documented, consistent internal rule for when a partially paid month is reported delinquent, and apply it uniformly across the portfolio. The format does not decide this for you.
- Do not report W simply because the borrower pays weekly on a monthly contract. Report the contractual cadence.
- Do not switch between W and M cycle to cycle. A frequency change should reflect an actual contract change.
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 W has to satisfy.
- Scheduled Monthly Payment stays a MONTHLY figure under W. This is the classic error of the field: reporting the weekly amount there understates the consumer's monthly obligation by roughly a factor of four and corrupts every debt-to-income calculation downstream.
- Terms Duration is a count of weekly payments under W. Pairing a weekly frequency with a Terms Duration that is obviously a month count (for example 060 on a loan that is really fourteen months) is a terms-frequency-mismatch.
- Pairs with Portfolio Type I. W on Portfolio Type R, C, or M is almost always wrong, since cards and mortgages bill monthly.
- Actual Payment Amount should be the total actually received during the reported month, which under W is the sum of four or five weekly payments, not a single one.
- The Payment History Profile carries one position per month regardless of cadence, so a weekly delinquency cannot be shown at weekly granularity anywhere on the record.
- Account Status must be judged for the month as a whole, and the in-repo source does not state how to aggregate four weekly obligations into that single judgement.
Common errors involving W
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 W in your own file
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