SONIA sterling overnight index average

Source: Bank of England Statistical Database, series IUDSOIA (SONIA). Licence: SONIA data licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 and copyright the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. The trade marks “Bank of England” and “SONIA” are registered trade marks of the Bank of England (terms). Files: data/raw/boe-sonia.csv.

Reading this series

SONIA is the sterling overnight index average, the risk-free reference rate for sterling and the benchmark that replaced LIBOR in that role. The Bank of England publishes it from transaction data, but it does not set it: it is a market rate reflecting unsecured overnight borrowing. This page uses Bank of England series IUDSOIA, under the Open Government Licence, with history from 1997 that includes the 2018 reform of the benchmark.

Because it is a market rate, SONIA moves daily and is not stepped. The headline is the latest daily print; the chart and the long-run statistics use month-ends, which keeps the drawn series readable. Read the value with its as-of date, then the "versus the previous reading" line for the most recent change. Mean, median, low and high summarise the observations in this build, not an official average. Chart and Table present one series two ways, range buttons filter the window, and Explore loads zoom and pan only when asked. SONIA is not Bank Rate, and it is not a mortgage or savings rate.

About this desk

Italy has no separate policy rate here. The Italy desk leads with the ECB deposit facility rate and €STR, the shared euro-area policy and overnight market series, then UK and US rates. Italy's monetary policy is set by the ECB Governing Council, so the desk uses the euro-area series rather than a Banca d'Italia policy rate that would misrepresent the framework.

Germany, France, Ireland and the /ea/ desk carry the same two ECB series. The figures come from the ECB Data Portal and are republished with attribution under the ESCB statistics reuse policy. Every desk shows the same series in a different order, so switching desks changes the menu and wording, not the numbers. The build ingests no Italian retail rate series, so none is shown. This is not financial advice, and readings may lag their source.