The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is New Zealand’s central bank, promoting a sound and dynamic monetary and financial system. Most securities reported are wholesale market instruments: New Zealand Government bonds (with the exception of the Feb 2016 bonds which are inflation-indexed bonds), Treasury bills, Corporate bonds, Reserve Bank bills, Commercial paper or Registered certificates of deposit (RCDs).The Interest bearing securities are written promissory agreements, whether marketable or not, in which one party promises to pay a stated sum on demand, or on a specified date, to the legal holder of the document. They may also involve a promise to pay stated interest at specified intervals over the term of the bond. Alternatively, they may be issued and traded at discount from their nominal value.

Key Features and Coverage on RIMES

For this data source, RIMES hosts 26 indices, including:

• Interest rates – A charge, quoted as a quarterly, semi-annual, or annual rate, paid by the borrower to the lender over a period of time. It is compensation to the lender for the sacrifice of the immediate use of money and for the inflationary erosion of its buying power over the life of a loan. Interest rates are sensitive/responsive to the supply and demand factors of credit and to inflationary expectations.
• Official Cash Rate (OCR) – The Official Cash Rate (OCR) is an interest rate set by the Reserve Bank to implement monetary policy, so as to maintain price stability.
• Overnight interbank cash rate – The Overnight Interbank Cash Rate is the weighted average interest rate of secured and unsecured overnight cash transactions that the markets (price makers) quote each other for the purposes of lending and borrowing short-term (overnight) money, without the need for Reserve Bank facilities. This series continues on from the “Call Money Market” series published by the Reserve Bank up to June 1999.
• Bank bills – These are mostly issued as Registered Certificates of Deposit (RCD) but can also be a Bill of Exchange issued or accepted by a bank. Bills of Exchange represent only a very small portion of total securities outstanding in this category. Bank bill yields are indicative 11.10am market mid-rates, published by Reuters. The reference rates are set by the market under the supervision of the New Zealand Financial Markets Association (NZFMA)
• Interest rate swap – The fixed interest rate used in an agreement between two parties to exchange, or “swap”, for the reference number of years, a series of fixed interest rate payments for a series of variable (or floating) interest rate payments (or vice versa). Interest rate flows are paid in arrears and settled on a net cash basis. The reference rate used for the variable (or floating) interest rate payments is the NZ 90-day bank bill rate. The swap market reference rates are set by the market under the supervision of the New Zealand Financial Markets Association (NZFMA).