• Question ID: 2020/0002
• Date of publication: 31/01/2020
• Subject matter: General clarifications, Loans price and other conditions
• AnaCredit Manual: Part II
• Data attribute: Interest rate, Interest rate spread / margin, Interest rate cap

Question

The AnaCredit Regulation specifies that the interest rate is defined as a percentage. Similarly, the AnaCredit Reporting Manual states that the interest rate is “converted to an annual basis and quoted in percentages per annum”. However, the same part of the Reporting Manual gives the instruction that the interest rate margin “is reported in basis points as a numerical value”. Could you clarify the right way to report the interest rate, so that the reporting agents all use the same format? Please specify the format in which you expect to receive the data attributes for interest rates.

Answer

Fractions, percentages and decimals can all represent the same number, but they are expressed differently.

We acknowledge that both the AnaCredit Regulation and the AnaCredit Reporting Manual may lead to misunderstanding regarding the units to be used for the reporting of AnaCredit data attributes relating to the interest rate, which are conventionally expressed as fractions or percentages. These data attributes are:

• the interest rate spread/margin;
• the interest rate cap;
• the interest rate floor;
• the interest rate.

These data attributes are transmitted to the ECB expressed as numerical values representing a proportion per hundred.

For example, an interest rate of 6% – i.e. when the debtor pays €6 interest for each €100 of borrowed money per annum – is reported to AnaCredit as 0.06. Please refer to the following table for more examples.

In particular, the data attribute “interest rate spread/margin”, which is the margin/spread added to the reference rate to account for the applied interest rate, is also reported as a numerical value representing a portion per hundred. For example, when the margin is 100 basis points above the reference rate, then 0.01 is reported to AnaCredit (100 basis points is equivalent to 1% and to 0.01 when expressed as a proportion per hundred). Please also see Examples 15 and 17 in Sections 3.4.12 and 4.4.1 respectively, in Part II of the AnaCredit Reporting Manual.

Note that the values presented reflect the technical standards for secondary reporting (i.e. from NCBs to the ECB). NCBs may require a different standard in the primary reporting (i.e. from reporting agents to NCBs).