Central Bank Interest Rates

What a policy rate is, and what it is not

A central bank's policy rate is the interest rate it sets by decision, the price of overnight money in its system, and the anchor from which almost every other rate in that currency is priced: mortgages, business loans, bond yields, savings rates. When the Reserve Bank of Australia holds its rate at 4.35% while the European Central Bank sits at 2.25%, that gap in the cost of money is one of the largest forces behind exchange-rate moves between their currencies, capital tends to flow toward the higher, all else equal.

What a policy rate is not is a market rate. It is a target or an administered level, not something that trades. The rates you actually pay or receive sit above or below it by a spread that reflects credit risk, term and your provider's margin. The policy rate tells you the direction and the floor; it does not quote your mortgage.

Reading the moves

Each bank moves in steps, usually 0.25 percentage points at a scheduled meeting, occasionally more in a crisis. The history line on each card is a step function for that reason: rates hold flat for weeks or months, then jump on a decision day. What matters for markets is rarely the level in isolation but the path, whether a bank is mid-hiking, mid-cutting, or on a prolonged hold, and how its path diverges from its peers. Two banks both at 3.75% mean very different things if one just cut from 5% and the other is climbing from 3%.

Decisions land on fixed calendars. The economic calendarcarries the FOMC dates, and the next-FOMC pagecounts down the US decision specifically. To see how expected-rate divergence is already showing up in the bond market, the yield curve trackerreads the Treasury market's own forecast of where the Fed is heading, and thecurrency strength metershows how those rate differentials are playing out in the currencies right now.

Which banks are shown, and why only these

We show a central bank's rate only where that bank's own data licensing permits us to redistribute it. The Federal Reserve's data is in the public domain; the ECB, Bank of England (under the UK Open Government Licence), Bank of Canada and Reserve Bank of Australia each grant reuse with attribution. Several other banks publish their rates under non-commercial or unclear terms, so we do not display them rather than risk a licence we cannot honour. Each rate above links to its official source so you can verify the current level directly.