NINJA loan

• ninja loan

Coined by the American lending company HCL Finance from an approximate initialism of no income, no job, no assets.

NINJA loan (plural NINJA loans)

1. A subprime loan issued to borrowers with no job, income, or assets.
   • 2007 February 1, Edward Chancellor, “Ponzi nation”, in Institutional Investor:

     On top of all this, banks are prying less into the private lives of their mortgage applicants. Traditionally, lenders wished to know something of the borrowers' background—their jobs, their wealth and soforth. In an age of perennially rising home prices, these tedious details could be dispensed with. "Low doc" and "no doc" loans have proliferated. One mortgage provider, HCL Finance, advertises itself as the "home of the 'no doc' loan." Among the products listed on its Web site is the NINJA loan: Even borrowers with "No Income, No Job and No Assets" are welcome to apply.

   • 2008, "FL Turbo", OT - Do you really think you can trust Bush? (discussion on Internet newsgroup rec.gambling.poker)

     No competent banker would make a NINJA loan unless he was faced with a Governmental Carrot, a Governmental Stick, or a combination of both.

   • 2012 May, Christopher L. Foote, Kristopher S. Gerardi, and Paul S. Willen, “Why Did So Many People Make So Many Ex Post Bad Decisions? The Causes of the Foreclosure Crisis”, in Atlanta Fed Working Papers, Working Paper 2012-7‎, page 19n:

     The NINA loan is the basis for the apocryphal “NINJA” loan that is often used as an example of excesses in the boom-era mortgage market. NINJA supposedly stood for “no-income, no job, no assets,” but no such loan ever existed. Also, the NINA code, which did exist, did not signify a loan to a borrower with no income. Rather, the code signified that the lender had no information about the borrower’s income.

• NINA loan

• liar loan