It’s official. Brits have a better understanding of text speak than financial lingo.

A survey by building society Nationwide found that 79% of UK adults understood the term LOL (laugh out loud) and 77% knew the meaning of OMG (oh my god).

In contrast, only 17% knew what LTV stood for (loan-to-value) and just 53% could interpret the widely used acronym APR (annual percentage rate).

“Organisations such as banks, building societies and insurers have been using abbreviations for many years, but it’s alarming to see that people still don’t have a grasp of the basic financial terminology,” said Nationwide’s Andrew Baddeley-Chappell.

These findings aren’t surprising. The financial services industry has long been criticised for its overuse of jargon. And YourMoney.com has been moaning about it for a while. We blogged about it here in fact.

In the investment world, the lingo gets arguably more complicated.  Words and phrases such as FTSE, tracker, leveraging and quantitative easing get bandied about all over the place. The end result? Investors either run for the door or risk putting their money in unsuitable products.

That’s why YourMoney.com – together with fund group Liontrust – has launched a brand new glossary to help you get to grips with all the investment and pension lingo.

Covering everything from the basics to the more esoteric terms, we hope the glossary will make investing – and reading about investing – simpler.

The list is far from complete. We will be updating it regularly. So if there are any words or phrases you think we should add, please email them to me at joanna.faith@ae3media.co.uk.

We hope you find it a useful resource.

Clink here to visit the glossary.