Call Provision

A provision on a bond or other fixed-income instrument that allows the original issuer to repurchase and retire the bonds. If there is a call provision in place, it will typically come with a time window under which the bond can be called, and a specific price to be paid to bondholders and any accrued interest are defined.  

Callable bonds will pay a higher yield than comparable non-callable bonds. 



|||A bond call will almost always favor the issuer over the investor; if it doesn't, the issuer will simply continue to make the current interest payments and keep the debt active. Typically, call options on bonds will be exercised by the issuer when interest rates have fallen. The reason for this is that the issuer can simply issue new debt at a lower rate of interest, effectively reducing the overall cost of their borrowing, instead of continuing to pay the higher effective rate on the borrowings.