# Loan Origination Loan origination is the first leg of a TermPrime loan: the path from two institutions wanting to trade to a single binding loan contract. It has three steps, matching, proposal, and mutual signing, and one defining property. The parties co-sign only once, during mutual signing. From that point on, the agreed terms and the parties' forward consent are fixed into the contract, and the rest of the lifecycle runs against that one-time authorization without any further online signing. For where origination sits in the full lifecycle, see *How It Works*. This page goes a level deeper on each step. ### Matching A borrower and a lender each express their terms: amount, term, collateral, and target rate. The matching engine pairs compatible intents among counterparties that have already approved one another, and prepares a loan proposal from the matched terms. Matching only happens within each participant's approved set. Because the venue is disclosed and permissioned, participants are never matched with an unknown counterparty; the other side is always a known, pre-approved institution. The matching engine facilitates the pairing only. It does not take a position, hold assets, or become a party to the trade. ### Proposal Once a match is made, TermPrime publishes a loan proposal that captures all the economic and operational terms of the trade in one place, including: * The interest amount and maturity. * The collateral type and amount, and the debt type and amount. * The liquidation threshold. * The protocol fee. * The roles attached to the contract. The proposal is the single, complete description of the trade that both parties review before committing. Nothing material is left to be settled later; what the parties see in the proposal is what they sign. ### Mutual signing The borrower and lender both accept and sign the proposal. **This is the only point in the entire lifecycle where both parties sign online together.** In this single step, they lock in every term listed in the proposal. This one-time signing is what makes the rest of the loan efficient. By signing, each party also gives its forward consent for the actions that the contract will need later, so that once the loan is active, steps such as repayment or enforcement can execute against the authorization already captured here. Neither party has to come back online to sign again. Signing is performed with each institution's own wallet and keys; TermPrime never handles those keys, and a loan only becomes binding once both required signatures are present. ### From signing to an active loan Immediately after mutual signing, the loan is activated in a single atomic transaction: principal moves from lender to borrower (net of any protocol fee), the collateral is handled according to the chosen repo model, and an active loan contract is created. Because everything settles in one atomic transaction, either the whole activation completes or none of it does. How the collateral is handled at this step, and what that means for the rest of the loan, depends on the repo model. See *Repo Models*. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.termprime.finance/loan-origination.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.