Securitisation

The practice of bundling together certain types of assets so they can be repackaged as interest-bearing securities. The assets in question tend to be those that are not normally tradable: residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, car loans etc. Securitisation was highly popular in the early 2000s, when investors were looking for assets that yielded more than government bonds. But the bundling of subprime mortgages led to the financial crisis of 2007-09.