A creditor is a party (e.g. person, organization, company, or government) that has a claim to the services of a second party. It is a person or institution to whom money is owed. The first party, in general, has provided some property or service to the second party under the assumption (usually enforced by contract) that the second party will return an equivalent property and service. The second party is frequently called a debtor or borrower. The first party is the creditor, which is the lender of property, service or money.
The term creditor is frequently used in the financial world, especially in reference to short term loans, long term bonds, and mortgage loans. In law, a person who has a money judgment entered in their favor by a court is called a judgement creditor.
The term creditor derives from the notion of credit. In modern America, credit refers to a rating which indicates the likelihood a borrower will pay back his or her loan. In earlier times, credit also referred to reputation or trustworthiness.
Read more about Creditor: Accounting Classification, Creditors Power During Insolvency
Famous quotes containing the word creditor:
“A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he canceled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 7:41,42.
“Here were poor streets where faded gentility essayed with scanty space and shipwrecked means to make its last feeble stand, but tax-gatherer and creditor came there as elsewhere, and the poverty that yet faintly struggled was hardly less squalid and manifest than that which had long ago submitted and given up the game.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“A creditor is worse than a slave-owner; for the master owns only your person, but a creditor owns your dignity, and can command it.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)