In general, a lease that provides only funding for the leased vehicle, with the lessee bearing most or all of the risks of ownership, most notably depreciation.
The term is used generically and, depending on specifics relative to a particular contract and the particular accounting and taxation rules of a given country, a finance lease may or may not be subject to off balance sheet treatment and the lessee may or may not be treated as the owner relative to the country's tax benefits and liabilities.
This gives rise to some confusion, since, for example, in the U. S., a finance lease (when the term is used generically) could be either a Capital Lease or an Operating Lease (since these latter terms have particular defining characteristics as determined and communicated by the accounting profession).
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