• Investment bankers have a language of their own, even when discussing mundane topics at work.
• It can make the industry seem more complicated than it really is.
• Here are 12 words and phrases that industry insiders say are commonly used in the workplace.

If a random person tunes in to a bank’s quarterly earnings call or stands in line at a coffee shop behind a pair of bankers, it’s likely that half the conversation is incomprehensible to them.

This is not only because finance is inherently technical. Part of what makes working on Wall Street seem so complicated and mystical to outsiders is the distinct vernacular in which financiers speak—even when discussing everyday topics like bonuses and PowerPoint presentations.

If a CEO says they’re “exploring strategic alternatives,” it often just means the company is trying to sell one underperforming business line. A “coffee chat” in the financial recruiting world is usually code for a preliminary job interview. And so on.

Using such specific terminology, exclusively from the inside, makes things seem more complicated than they really are. It is an extension of the culture of the industry as a whole: exclusive, hard to breakand designed to weed out anyone unwilling to figure it out and keep up.

Business Insider asked industry insiders to weigh in on the most common words and phrases they’ve used and heard in the office. To be sure, Wall Street jargon can vary depending on the job at hand, whether it’s advising on deals or helping big investors buy and sell stocks and bonds. These 12 terms, however, appear to be part of the basic language of investment-banking industry.

Ripen

This is banker-speak for when multiple banks compete to be chosen as a client’s advisor, whether it’s an IPO, a merger, a sale or a refinancing. Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick said it “sees declines coming in at three times the year-over-year rate” during its second-quarter earnings call.

Custom made

Just this word SOUNDS expensive. We underline less because it’s code for something else and more because of widespread industry use. In the context of finance, this term refers to services that are personalized; personalized; made especially for the individual needs of the client. You’ll find it on a lot of financial firm websites, often in a paragraph on the home page that boasts about all of the company’s “custom customer offerings.”

Color

“Color” basically means details and is often used when bankers ask for more of something. Whether it’s research or an explanation, asking for “more color” means “tell me more.”

“Can you give us more color on __?” is how many stock analysts start questions for CEOs on earnings calls.

Deck

Instead of saying slide show or PowerPoint, bankers refer to multi-page client presentations as “decks.” It is common for junior bankers to spend hours toiling over edits in packets at the behest of senior bankers who want to use them in client meetings. A manager might leave a comment on a page telling the junior banker to “kill this,” which just means delete it. A manager might also instruct the junior banker to “take another stab” at it, which means redoing the pitch again and emailing it back.

Boil the ocean

It’s obviously not possible to boil ocean water, and that’s the idea behind this turn of phrase (although it doesn’t originate in banking). If a banker remarks that a junior should not “boil the ocean”, it basically means that he is doing too much or making something more complicated than it needs to be.

Capacity

Capacity is another word for bandwidth, and this twist is often used by associates or vice presidents who need help from lower-ranking analysts in investment banking. The unspoken rule is that to be a “good” analyst, the only correct answer when a senior asks them if they “have the ability” to edit a 50 page deck in an hour is yes. (Their superiors might also go on to assure them that “it won’t be a big deal”).

Exit the options

In private equity land, making an “exit” usually refers to selling a firm’s portfolio company, hopefully at a good return on investment. In the banking world, it has turned into another use: a new job.

“Exit opps”, short for exit opportunities, refers specifically to employment prospects that can reasonably be attained after leaving a particular bank or firm. When a college student decides investment banking internshipsfor example, he or she might consider whether a particular firm has “good exit options.” For many junior bankers, good exit options are often about the potential to land a job private capital after the standard two-year analyst program ends. A bank with high exit options might have a lot of graduates working for top private equity firms, for example.

staff

In layman’s terms, “staff” would usually refer to any person who works at a company or organization. In the world of investment banking, “staffer” is a very specific job and title that refers to a person (usually a VP) who is responsible for assigning work to junior bankers and assigning them to specific deal teams. They have a lot of power over juniors’ lives, including the quality of the deals they work on and their share of the hard work.

Typically, the staff role is temporary and just one of the VP’s many responsibilities.

transpire

This term refers to how many hours or how long a particular investment banking group tends to work. For example, you might hear someone say that the healthcare team at investment bank XYZ is a “particularly sweaty” group to work with. Basically, that means they really work long hours — worse than usual (and the industry-wide norm is already in the 80 to 90 hour week range).

Street

Street (often written with an “S”) is short for Wall Street—not the literal Manhattan block, but the high finance industry as a whole and those who work in it.

You might hear someone in banking say, for example, that their firm has “the best culture on the street” or that a certain group is “top of the street in transaction flow.” A firm that pays fair bids compensation that’s “in line with the Street”. In stock market talk, “street trading” usually means that one trades along the lines of majority opinion.

Top bucket

Bonuses indicate one’s performance – or at least some senior bankers’ perception of performance. If you get a “top-bucket” bonus, that means your check was on the high end of the spectrum. The middle and bottom bonuses go accordingly. It is so much a part of the culture that the term is even used by the higher ups to describe themselves junior bankers professional.

If a first-year banker is constantly pulling all-nighters perfecting client materials like research decks and summaries, his VP might say to the MD, “Wow, Jane is a real top analyst.” Jane could go on to earn one of the highest bonuses in her analyst class at the end of the year. Someone might be called a “bottom analyst” if they are not busy or are consistently the first to leave the office. Core analysts tend to get the least desirable assignments.

Version up

“Don’t forget to update the version so I can see your changes,” an associate might say to a new analyst. Saving documents can get quite complicated in banking. Whenever a banker makes changes to client materials prior to the meeting – such as a package – it is standard practice for each round of edits or changes to be saved as a new file. This is done in case a file crashes or someone needs to refer to an older version. Bankers “level up” by adding v02, v03, v04, etc., to the end of the file name.