Benchmarking
Both a noun and a verb, because money is flexible that way.
A financial organization (or any other organization for that matter) runs an analysis to determine its performance, competitiveness, efficiency, products/productivity, and potential. It is, in effect, an excruciating, clinical, microscopic comparison of your firm or organization to others that are similar. So you have to have broad shoulders and thick skin before you begin a benchmark.
The benchmarking analysis leads next to an assessment (yup, a kind of test) that can determine all kinds of things: whether to grow, whether to invest, whether to sell, whether to relocate, whether to diversify.
The term benchmark is often used in relation to government-issued Treasury Bonds or T-notes. United States 10-year Treasury Bonds are sold to investors (mostly institutional, but also individual) as security against government debt. Tracked closely by banks, government agencies, and financial institutions with employees who spend way too much time in front of multiple computer monitors, the yield on the 10-year T-note is used as a direct benchmark for the setting of other interest rates, such as mortgages. And that has implications (whether you own a home or not) for almost everyone.
So mark your benches and your benchmarks for ways that obscure financial transactions (and actors) may affect your life.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What are lenders?27 Views
finance a la shmoop what are lenders is that a bagel company hmm okay well maybe
it doesn't matter here lenders are the people and institutions
and countries who loan money banks are lenders they loan money for small [woman walks into bank]
business for big business and well everything in between
banks are big lenders they generally focus on large amounts for big
corporations and take their spread then you have savings and loans well they're
smaller more intimate local cousins of the banks and they focus on local loans
like your local flower shop needs 25 grand in credit but lenders also sell a [flowers in a store]
special kind of loan a mortgage for when you want to buy a home and the interest
on mortgages is distinctively tax-deductible your big brother can also
be a lender that hundred bucks he loaned you yeah is not like the hundred that [sister approaches big brother]
grandmama quote loaned you unquote ie Big Brother's long does not just get
naturally forgotten his alone carries interest in newgy penalties when it's [fist appears as sister smiles]
not paid back to lenders it's people who loan money lending loaning got in there
kind of related [sister being nuggied]
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