ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Conduit and Sink OFCs

Okay, so imagine you have a big bowl of water. That bowl represents a building or a big project. Now, if you want to get that water from one place to another, you need something to hold it and a way to move it.

Imagine taking a tube or hose and attaching it to the bowl. This tube is the conduit, and it’s like a straw for the water to travel through. The water flows from the bowl, into the tube or conduit, and through to the other end.

Now, let’s say you want that water to go out of the house, maybe through a pipe or drain. That pipe or drain is the sink. It’s like a big hole in the ground that leads out of the building. The conduit, or tube, leads to the sink, and the water flows through the tube and out of the sink.

So, in the world of finance, a conduit is a way to move money from one place to another. It’s like the tube or hose in our bowl of water example. And a sink is where that money ends up, like the drain at the other end.

This might sound a little boring, but it’s actually really important because a lot of big projects, like building airports or highways, need a lot of money. Instead of just taking out one big loan, which can be risky and expensive, governments and companies can use conduits and sinks to borrow money from lots of different people or institutions, spreading out the risk and lowering the cost.

So, just like moving water from one place to another, conduits and sinks help move money from lots of small sources to one big project.