credithour

Credithour is a theoretical unit used in financial analytics to quantify the pace of credit utilization. It describes how quickly a borrower uses available credit over time. The basic calculation is credithour = U / T, where U is the total amount of new credit drawn within the observation window and T is the length of the window in hours. For cross-account comparisons, analysts often normalize by the credit limit A, yielding utilization velocity = (U / A) / T, i.e., the fraction of available credit used per hour.

Origin: The term is not part of standard credit scoring. It has appeared in fintech research and risk dashboards as a way to add a time-dimension to utilization data. It is used primarily in exploratory analytics and internal risk models.

Application: It helps lenders assess risk by capturing the speed of borrowing, identify unusual borrowing bursts, and calibrate dynamic credit limits or repayment reminders. It complements static measures like utilization ratio and credit score.

Limitations: Not standardized, sensitive to data frequency and window length, can be distorted by one-time draws or seasonal activity; it requires high-quality timestamped data; contextual interpretation needed (income, purpose, payment behavior).

Related concepts include credit utilization, utilization velocity, dynamic credit limits, and real-time risk scoring.