Glossary
Calendar Year
A calendar year is the period beginning on 1 January and ending on 31 December. In the West, it is based on the Gregorian calendar.
A calendar year is usually not aligned with a fiscal year, which is a reporting period defined for taxation purposes.
Call Auction
A call auction is an event where participants buy and sell goods. At the events, participants place orders to purchase items at particular prices. Orders made during a call actions are enforcable as a contract.
Call Date
A call date is the date on which a purchaser of a bond can redeem it, before the bond reaches maturity. A call date may occur when an issuer feels there is need to refinance the original purpose of the bond.
Call Market
A call market is one where each transaction occurs at predetermined time intervals.
Call Option
A call option is an agreement granting the buyer the right to buy assets (such as stocks or bonds) at an agreed price during a specific time period. A call option does not obligate the buyer to complete the purchase of assets.
Call to Action (CTA)
A call-to-action is a term used in marketing. It refers to the action a marketer wants the audience member to perform, such as clicking the registration button on a website.
Capacitiy Utilisation Rate
The capacity utilisation rate is used to measure how much of an organisation's potential economic output is actually realised.
Cap and Trade
Cap and trade refers to a set of governmental policies aimed at limiting the levels of emissions of certain chemicals, particularly carbon dioxide. This is achieved by limiting the total allowed amount of emissions and allowing companies to trade parts of their individual limits among each other.
Capital Account
In macroeconomics, the capital accounts refers to the part of the balance of payments that records all transactions made between entities in one country with the rest of the world. These can consists of imports, exports, services, etc.
Capital Allocation
Capital allocation refers to the actual distribution of a company's financial resources.
Capital Buffer
A capital buffer refers to the amount of funds a financial institution must hold under particular regulations, which come in addition to other types of minimum capital requirements. These capital buffers are designed to combat the procyclical nature of lending. Examples of such requirements are set forth in the Basel III regulatory reforms.
Capital Divident
A capital dividend is a kind of payment a company makes to investors that is taken from capital paid to the company by investors or from shareholders' equity, as opposed to payments made from a company's earnings. Such payments are usually made when a dividend payment is required, but company earnings are insufficient for such a payment. It is sometimes referred to as "return of capital".
Challenger Bank
A challenger or neobank is the term used to define a new firm which offers alternative banking services to traditional institutions.
The rise of challenger banks began in 2013, after the FCA loosened laws and requirements needed for organisations to open banking establishments.
CHAPS
The Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) is a same-day automated payment system for processing payments made within the UK.
Cloud
A cloud is a digital location where shared computer and storage resources are accessed as a service (usually online), instead of hosted locally on physical services.
C-Share
C-share is a classification of shares offered to investors in a mutual fund. C-shares usually have a level load that includes regular charges to investors (as opposed to back-end or front-end sales load structures, respectively associated with B-class and A-class shares). Compared to other B-class shares, C-shares usually have lower expense ratios, but higher than A-class shares. Expense ratios refers to the overall annual costs of mutual fund management.
Currency Swap
A currency swap is is the exchange of interest or principal in one currency for an equal amount in another currency. This strategy is used to offset against currency risk.
Cyber Attack
A cyber-attack is a malicious attempt to damage, disrupt or gain unauthorized access to computer systems, networks or devices via cyber means
Cyber Security
Cyber security is the protection of devices, networks and the information on them from theft or damage.
Dangling Debit
A dangling debit is a recorded debit balance that has no corresponding credit balance that would allow it to be written off. It reflects discrepancies in a company's balance sheet.
Dark Pool
A dark pool is a private financial exchange for trading securities. Dark pools allow investors to trade without exposure until after the finalisation of the deal.
Dark Wallet
A dark wallet is an open source cryptocurrency platform designed to protect users' privacy. It enables data anonymisation by obfuscating transactions carried out in the online market space.
Data Analytics
Data analytics is the science and practice of analysing raw data in order to draw conclusion from the available information. Many techniques and processes of data analytics have been automated in mechanical and algorithmic processes.
Data Mining
Data mining is the practice of algorithmically processing vast swaths of information in order to draw useful conclusions from it.
Datsa Protection Officers (DPO)
A data protection officer is an employee of a company that acts as an independent advocate for the proper care of customers' information This role is mandated by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), laid out by the European Union.
Davos World Economic Forum,
The Davos World Economic Forum, commonly referred to by the name of its host city, Davos, is an annual gathering of business and world leaders, investors, politicians and journalists from around the world. The Forum is a platform to discuss current global economic and social issues.
Deduction
A deduction is any expenditure subtracted from the gross income to reduce the amount that is subject to income tax.
Deferment Period
The deferment period refers to the set time during which a borrower does not have to pay interest on the principal of the loan.
Digital Foreign Exchange
A digital currency exchange (DCE), also known as a crypto exchange, is a marketplace which allows for the purchasing, exchanging and selling of electronic currency as a legal tender. Digital currency exchanges occur online, though firms may have physical offices.
Distributed Ledger Technology
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is one innovation that has been cited as a means of transforming payment, clearing, and settlement (PCS) processes, including how funds are transferred and how securities, commodities, and derivatives are cleared and settled.
Distributed ledgers use independent computers (referred to as nodes) to record, share and synchronize transactions in their respective electronic ledgers (instead of keeping data centralized as in a traditional ledger). Blockchain organizes data into blocks, which are chained together in an append only mode.
Dodd-Frank
The Dodd-Frank is the abbreviation for the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into United States federal law in 2010. Created in response to the 2008 financial crisis, the act brings changes to financial regulation to federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation’s financial services industry in a bid for improved financial stability and consumer protection.
Double-Spending
Double-spending refers to the risk that a unit of digital currency could be spent twice. This is a problem that affects digital currencies only, as they can be easily copied and replicated.
To address this concern, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies implement mechanisms to verify the authenticity of each transaction. To date, attempts by hackers to circumvent such measures have met only limited success.
Earned Premium
An earned premium refers to the premium collected by an insurance company for the portion of a policy that has expired. That is, earned premium refers to the money paid by the insured to the insurer for the time when the policy was in effect before expiring.
Earning Assets
Earning assets refers to assets that are income-producing that are owned or held by an investor.
Earning Potential
Earning potential refers to the potential future gains investors may receive from holding a stock.
EBITDA - Earning Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization (EBITDA) is used to measure a company's overall financial performance. It is used as an alternative to alternative to earnings or net income measurements.
This metric excludes the cost of capital investment and of expenses associated with debt by adding back interest expense and taxes to earnings.
EBITDA is a measure of the profitability of a company.
Economic Efficiency
Economic efficiency is achieved when all goods, resources and factors of production are distributed to their most valuable users and waste is close to eliminated.
Economic Equilibrium
Economic equilibrium is a state of the economy in which economic forces are balanced. In a state of equilibrium, economic variable do not change without external influences.
Economic Espionage
Economic espionage is the name given to a host of illegal activities aimed at obtaining the trade secrets of a company.
Encryption
Encryption is a mathematical function that protects information by making it unreadable by everyone except those with the key to decode it.
E-Payment
E-payment or Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) is the acceptance of electronic payment.
E-payments were first available via bank transfers, but over the years credit cards have overtaken and become the most used payment format for e-commerce transactions. Increased security measures include use of the card verification number (CVN) which detects fraud by comparing the verification number printed on the signature strip on the back of the card with the information on file with the cardholder’s issuing bank. Also online merchants have to comply with stringent rules stipulated by the credit and debit card issuers this means that merchants must have security protocol and procedures in place to ensure transactions are more secure. This can also include having a certificate from an authorized certification authority (CA) who provides PKI (Public-Key infrastructure) for securing credit and debit card transactions.