What an official cash rate is
An official cash rate is the interest rate a central bank chooses for overnight money in its own banking system. It is not a mortgage rate, and it is not a deposit rate. It is the policy setting that sits underneath those retail prices. When the Reserve Bank of New Zealand changes the Official Cash Rate, wholesale markets reprice first — bank bills, swaps, government bonds — and banks then decide how much of that move to pass into the rates they quote to households and firms. The same idea holds for the Reserve Bank of Australia’s cash rate target, the Federal Reserve’s federal funds setting, and Bank Rate at the Bank of England. This site republishes those official settings, plus a few closely watched New Zealand retail and wholesale series, so you can see the current number and the path that got here.