Glossary

Hawala is an informal way of sending money across borders through a network of brokers who settle with each other by trust and later balancing, so little or no money physically crosses the border.

A hazard is anything with the potential to cause harm, such as a chemical, a moving machine, a fire source or a fault in a system. It describes the source of harm, not the chance of it happening.

HACCP is a preventive food safety method that identifies where biological, chemical or physical hazards can enter a process and sets controls, limits and checks at the steps where they can be stopped.

HAZOP is a structured team review of an industrial process design, in which guide words such as no, more or less are applied to each step to find hazards and operating problems.

Hazardous waste management is the controlled identification, labelling, storage, transport, treatment and disposal of waste that is toxic, flammable, corrosive or reactive, to protect people and the environment.

A health and safety risk assessment is a structured look at what could injure or harm people at work, how likely and how serious that harm is, and what controls are needed to keep it acceptable.

Hedging means taking a second position chosen to gain when an existing exposure loses, so the two largely cancel out.

The hierarchy of controls is a ranked list of ways to deal with a hazard, from the most effective, removing it, down to the least reliable, giving people protective equipment.

High-quality liquid assets are assets that can be turned into cash quickly, with little or no loss in value, even in stress. Banks hold them to meet short-term cash needs.

A high-risk AI system is one that the EU AI Act places in a category where errors could seriously affect safety or fundamental rights, so it must meet strict requirements before and after sale.

High-risk jurisdictions are countries or territories judged to carry a greater chance of money laundering, terrorist financing or related abuse, because of weak controls, poor cooperation or other risk factors.

Hit rate is the share of screening checks that produce an alert, or the share of those alerts that turn out to be real matches. It measures how well a screening system is tuned.

Human oversight means that a trained person can monitor an AI system, review its outputs and step in to override or stop it, so important decisions are not left to the machine alone.

Human rights due diligence is a company's continuing routine for spotting harm to people caused or contributed to by its own operations and its business partners, limiting it and reporting on the results.