About the 90-day bank bill
The 90-day bank bill yield is a wholesale New Zealand interest rate. It is the market price of short-term bank paper with about three months to run, expressed as a percent per annum. Unlike the OCR, nobody at the Reserve Bank “sets” this number each morning. Dealers quote it; the Reserve Bank records it and publishes it in table B2. The latest daily value on this page is 2.99% as of 20 Aug 2026.
Bank bills sit in the gap between the policy rate and longer-term swap and bond yields. When markets expect the OCR to rise, 90-day bills usually trade above the cash rate. When they expect cuts, bills can trade below it. That spread is one of the simplest ways to read near-term policy expectations without opening a full futures strip. It is also a funding benchmark: floating-rate business loans and some wholesale facilities have historically been priced off 90-day paper.
The history on this page is stitched from two official workbooks so the series can run from 1985. Values from 4 January 1985 through 2017 come from the Reserve Bank’s B2 daily file, series INM.DB03.N. Values from 2018 onward come from the current B2 daily-close file, series INM.DB03.NZZV. We do not blend, smooth or rebase the join. If the two source series ever differ in convention (midday versus closing, or a later change of data vendor), that difference is inherited. The chart and the mean/median/min/max statistics use month-end observations so a few very noisy days do not dominate a forty-year picture; the large current number is still the latest daily print.
Across 500 month-end observations from 31 Jan 1985 to 20 Aug 2026, the mean is 6.79% and the median is 5.64%. The lowest month-end reading is 0.25% on 30 Nov 2020; the highest is 27.40% on 30 Sep 1985. Those extremes are market outcomes, not policy settings. The 1980s prints are high because New Zealand’s short-term market rates were high. The very low prints sit in the years when the OCR itself was at a floor and front-end bills had nowhere else to go.
How to read the chart: a 90-day yield that is rising while the OCR is unchanged usually means the market is pulling forward hikes, or asking for more term premium at the three-month point. A yield that is falling ahead of a widely expected cut is the same mechanism in reverse. Compare this page with the OCR page if you want that gap; do not treat the bill yield as a household deposit rate. Six-month term deposits are a different series, collected from retail cards, and they move more slowly.
The Reserve Bank’s B2 notes describe wholesale rates as prices that apply to large institutions rather than to individual borrowers. That is the right way to use this page. If you are looking up a personal loan or a term deposit, start with the retail series. If you are looking up what the money market thinks the next few OCR decisions are worth, start here.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a rate the RBNZ sets?
No. The OCR is set. The 90-day bank bill is a market yield that the Reserve Bank records in its B2 wholesale table.
Why does the series use two files?
The current official daily-close workbook begins in 2018. The 1985–2017 daily workbook extends the same 90-day concept backwards. We concatenate them and leave the values as published.
Why is the chart monthly if the rate is daily?
The latest figure is daily. The chart and the long-run statistics use month-end points so a four-decade market series stays readable.
Can I get a loan at this rate?
Not as a household. This is a wholesale benchmark. Retail lending rates are higher and are published separately in B3.
What is a basis point here?
One hundredth of a percentage point. A move from 2.99% to 3.09% is 10 basis points.
Source: RBNZ Wholesale interest rates (B2), 90-day bank bill. Local files: data/raw/hb2-daily-1985-2017.xlsx (INM.DB03.N) + data/raw/hb2-daily-close.xlsx (INM.DB03.NZZV). Values are republished without alteration.