Finance

Management of money.

Finance Company

Company providing money.

Finance Broker

A broker who arranges finance.

Financial Services Authority

Sole regulatory authority for the UK financial services industry.

Fixed Rate

A specific rate of interest for a set length of time. Most commonly this is for between one and five years though it can be as long as ten years. As a rule the longer the fixed period the higher the starting rate of interest. A lender will not want to commit to lending you money at a really low interest rate for ten years when there is a fair chance that during that period the general level of interest rates may rise above the rate at which they are lending you money. The lowest interest rates are often found with deals that are fixed for two to three years.

Flexible Benefits

This is a program specifically for the employees needs. The employee can select from a range of benefits offered by their employer.

Flexible Mortgage

This mortgage gives you the freedom to change the amount and frequency of your mortgage payments. This is one of the most flexible mortgages on the market., which can potentially save you money by linking your current account and mortgage together.

Flow-through Funds

Contributions to a foundation that are used primarily for direct grant making, rather than for endowing the foundation permanently. Most corporate foundations depend on these funds each year rather than on income produced from endowment funds.

Footsie

Footsie stands for the FT-SE 100 Share Index, the UK stock market’s main benchmark index. It measures the daily share price performance of Britain’s top 100 public limited companies, ranked by their size.

Freehold

This means that you own the property outright as opposed to leasehold where you own the rights to occupy a property for a specified period of time.

FSA

Financial Services Authority.

FTB

First Time Borrower.

FT-SE

A index made up of all the companies listed on the UK Stock exchange and is compiled by the Financial Times. The purpose of the index is to provide a benchmark of the performance of the stock market as a whole. The benchmark is often used to measure the effectiveness of a fund manager.

Fundamentals

Refers to the underlying economic factors affecting a particular market, country or sector and will include such aspects as industrial output, wages and raw materials costs, currency strength or weaknesses, trade balance and so on.