Asset liability management

The matching of the maturities of what a lender owns against what it owes, disclosed as a table of expected inflows and outflows by time bucket.

A negative gap in the short buckets means more money is due out than is due in, and the shortfall has to be refinanced. In normal conditions that is routine. In a stressed market it is the failure mode, and it is the mechanism behind the best-known Indian non-bank collapses.

The disclosure is published and is the single most important page in a lender's annual report after the asset quality tables.

Read the shortest buckets. That is where the company either survives or does not.