Interest Rate Cap Structure

  

Categories: Bonds, Accounting

A loan can have a fixed rate or an adjustable/variable rate.

The fixed rate remains constant through the life of the loan. You get a 30-year mortgage with a fixed rate of 5.5%. You pay 5.5% interest each and every year of that 30-year span. It doesn't move around at all, no matter what overall interest rates do.

An adjustable-rate loan has a floating interest rate. It moves around in response to changes in overall rates. Your 30-year mortgage might start at 5.5%, but it will re-adjust based on changes in overall rates. So it may stay at 5.5% for five years, before re-adjusting to 7.5%. The next readjustment brings it to 7%, but a few years later, it rises to 8%. The rate varies over time (or adjusts, depending on the term you like best).

The interest rate cap structure describes how these re-adjustments happen. It limits (or caps) how much the rate on an adjustable-rate loan can move at any one time. It also sets the time limit between adjustments.

So...you take out a 10-year variable rate loan starting at 6%. It's first adjustment happens after five years. There is a cap of two percentage points, meaning that it can only move up to 8% or down to 4% on that first adjustment. After that, the loan adjusts every year, with a cap of one percentage point each time. Those stipulations describe the interest rate cap structure for the loan.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Accrued Interest?42 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop What is a crude interest A crude

00:07

interest would be an investment holding in oil Black crude

00:11

texas t remember jed boy Howdy coming Listen to a

00:15

story about a man named about that Alright all good

00:18

but that's not what a crude interest is at all

00:22

while street never sleeps right So even though a given

00:25

bond might pay forty bucks twice a year what happens

00:28

if you buy the bond midway through a semester period

00:32

Like let's say this particular bond has a coupon paying

00:35

eight percent a year So on a thousand dollars a

00:37

principle this bond pays eighty bucks a year in the

00:40

form of interest or forty bucks twice a year paid

00:43

on june thirtieth in december thirty first Well think about

00:46

the number's here on a monthly basis each month that

00:49

bond creeps closer to its next interest payment and over

00:53

the course of a year there are twelve creeps Different

00:56

creeps each month that goes by the bonds creep further

00:59

into the eighty dollars a year or eighty dollars per

01:02

twelve months or eight twelves of a bond payment each

01:05

month Well at eighty bucks a year despond pay six

01:09

Dollars and sixty seven cents a month in interest Yeah

01:12

we got the math there Yeah So let's say you

01:15

sell it halfway into its period Presumably the market price

01:18

would reflect the accrued interest on the bond or three

01:21

months worth of interest or three times that six sixty

01:24

seven figure or yes twenty bucks And that makes sense

01:27

right You've held that bond a quarter a quarter of

01:30

a year a quarter of a year's interest of eighty

01:33

boxes one fourth of eighty or yep twenty So yeah

01:37

the math works What do you know So the price

01:39

of the bond would creep upward to reflect that accrued

01:42

interest That is if you sold it on the exact

01:45

end of the quarter that thousand dollar bond which was

01:48

conveniently selling it exactly part The end of the last

01:51

payment Well that bond would likely sell in the market

01:54

place for about a thousand twenty dollars The buyer would

01:57

get a check for forty bucks just ninety days later

02:00

from the a company that issued the bond And well

02:02

they can take that forty dollars and reinvested in crude

02:06

oil How about that Now you've made old jed very

02:09

proud So come and listen to a story about a

02:11

man named shmoop Poor rests A writer barely kept his

02:14

family fed and one day there was a site of 00:02:18.46 --> [endTime] web and well stuff happens

Up Next

Finance: How Are Interest Rates Determined?
676 Views

How are interest rates determined? In short, the Federal Reserve plays the main role in determining interest rates. To do this, they use informatio...

Finance: What is the inverse relationship between interest rates and bond values?
75 Views

The inverse relationship refers to the fact that as interest rates go up, bond prices go down, and vice-versa. Bottom line reason is supply and dem...

Finance: What is interest?
20 Views

What is interest? In order to create an incentive for a lender, a borrower usually repays debt with interest, a percentage of overpayment for the l...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)