Top 20 financial lingo
When overhearing a conversation between two financial experts you may be left feeling baffled, especially if you’re a financial newbie! But don’t worry you aren’t alone. Getting to know the terms of the industry is tricky and will develop over time. You will be taught all the terminology you need to know, and more, throughout the duration of your financial services course, no matter what level you choose to study at. To get you up to speed we have put together some of the top and easy to remember financial lingo.
- Audit – a check or analysis carried out by a company’s auditor or tax official
- Balance Sheet – a document detailing a business’ assets at a particular point in time
- Bank Reconciliation – the principle of cross checking that all data matches up
- Contingent Liability – a responsibility that only has to be paid if a specific circumstance occurs
- Crowd Funding – the process of funding your company through public donations
- Employee Share Schemes (ESS) – this is when a company offers its employees the chance to purchase some of its shares
- Forecast – a future prediction of financial transactions
- Float – when shares of a private company are made available to the public
- Fringe Benefits – benefits offered to employees that aren’t money. An examples would be a company car
- Fully Drawn Advance – a loan with a fixed interest rate for a period of time
- Initial Public Offering (IPO) – this is when a company first offers its shares to the general public for purchasing
- Insolvent – when a business is not in a financial position to pay their debts
- Loan to Value Ratio (LVR) – when a percentage is given regarding the market value of a property or asset in comparison to the loan amount
- Personal Property Security Register (PPSR) – a national register used to help protect customers when purchasing personal property
- Petty Cash – the money that a company has for small miscellaneous goods
- Plant and Equipment – permanent assets a business has, examples include furniture, computers etc.
- Research and Development (R&D) – a department within a company that is responsible for coming up with new, fresh creative ideas through carrying out research and development
- Return On Investment (ROI) – this is the principle of calculating how efficient a business is at generating profits
- Self-Managed Superannuation Fund – this is the idea that you are responsible for saving your own money for your retirement fund
- Superannuation – this is the money you put aside for retirement