Discussion Paper

How Do Deposit Rates Respond to Monetary Policy?

Abstract: When the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) wants to raise the target range for the fed funds rate, it raises the interest on reserve balances (IORB) paid to banks, the primary credit rate offered to banks, and the award rate paid to participants that invest in the overnight reverse repo (ON RRP) market to keep the fed funds rate within the target range (see prior Liberty Street Economics posts on this topic). When these rates change, market participants respond by adjusting the valuation of financial products, of which a significant category is deposits. Understanding how deposit terms adapt to changes in policy rates is important to understanding the impact of monetary policy more broadly. In this post, we evaluate the pass through of the fed funds rate to deposit rates (that is, deposit betas) over the past several interest rate cycles and discuss factors that affect deposit rates.

Keywords: deposits; beta; fed funds; monetary policy;

JEL Classification: G2; E5;

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Part of Series: Liberty Street Economics

Publication Date: 2022-11-21

Number: 20221121

Note: Editor’s Note: When this post was first published the entries in the legend for the first chart were transposed; the legend has been corrected (November 21, 9:45 a.m.).