Get startedGet started for free

Converting Effective & Nominal Interest Rates

1. Title Slide

So you can see that if we know the compounding frequency for any nominal rate, we can find an effective rate, but also for any effective rate, we can find the nominal rate. On the left hand side, we can see that a nominal rate of 10% compounding quarterly gives an effective rate of 10.38%. This can be checked by going back the other way. On the right hand side, we're starting with an annual effective rate of 10.38%. This gives a nominal rate of 10%, getting us back to where we started. Let's get back into Excel and make sure that we can get the same results as we see here. The formulas can be a little tricky to remember, so I've made sure that these are also written in the Excel workbook. So here we are picking up from where we were when we last visited our Excel workbook for the chapter, when we completed the table to calculate the effective rate for different compounding frequencies. Below that we've got some space to practice converting a nominal rate into an effective rate, first of all, and then an effective rate into a nominal rate. So let's put some inputs in and the loan amount is 10,000, the nominal interest rate is 10%, and we want to convert that to an effective rate if the compounding frequency is a four and we've got a one year period. So the key things that we need to calculate the effective rate from a nominal rate is the nominal rate and the compounding frequency, so we can pick that up there. So down below cell D152 and D153, we've got the formula to calculate the effective rate if we know the nominal rate. We can say it's equals bracket one plus the nominal rate, which is 10%, which you've just picked up here, divided by the frequency four, all raised to the frequency of four, minus one, and we can see that the effective rate is 10.38. And you can see that in the table above, in the third row of the table above. So let's now practice going the other way, converting an effective rate into a nominal rate. Again, the loan amount is 10,000. Not a 100,000, sorry, 10,000. The annual effective interest rate. Well, let's pick up what we've just calculated, because we know that if we convert it into a nominal rate, we should get 10%. The frequency is four again, and the term is one. So what are the key inputs that we need? We need the annual effective rate of 10.38, and we need the compounding frequency of four, and there we can see the formula for the nominal rate, if we know the effective rate, and it's quite challenging, so we have to be really careful putting it in, and that's the benefit or having it just below the cell there. So we're going to start by equals[bracket one plus the effective interest rate] all raised to the power of one divided by the compounding frequency, close bracket minus 1, close our final bracket and annualize it by multiplying that by the compounding frequency. And when we do that, we can see that we get a nominal rate of 10%, which is the result that we were expecting.

2. Let's practice!