Glossary
Financial Services Sales Agent Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential financial services sales agent terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key financial services sales agent vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in financial services sales agent training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Asset allocation
- Mixing asset types to manage risk.
- Bond
- A loan to a company or government.
- Commission
- Fee earned on transactions.
- Diversification
- Spreading investments to reduce risk.
- ETF
- Exchange-traded fund.
- Fiduciary
- Acting in a client’s best interest.
- FINRA
- Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
- IRA
- Individual retirement account.
- Know your customer (KYC)
- Collecting client information.
- Mutual fund
- A pooled investment.
- Portfolio
- A collection of investments.
- Rebalancing
- Restoring target allocations.
- Regulation Best Interest
- SEC rule for broker recommendations.
- Risk tolerance
- How much risk a client can accept.
- Stock
- Ownership in a company.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Financial Services Sales Agent practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Financial Services Sales Agent training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.