Alvin Soong’s Blog

What is SIBOR
It stands for the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate

Where do you see this?

In bank statements explaining how your mortgage rates are determined.

What does it mean?

It refers, more or less, to repayments on your loans, because Sibor affects the mortgage rate.

Sibor is the rate at which banks lend to one another. When it falls, so do rates for variable or Sibor-linked mortgages. When the Sibor rises, you have to fork out more.

Sibor also gives a rough indication of where deposit and savings account rates at banks might be headed, as it is influenced partly by the supply and demand for funds in the Singapore interbank market.

When Sibor is low, it is cheaper for foreign banks, which have a smaller deposit base than local ones do, to borrow funds from the interbank market for their lending activities.

When this happens, the foreign banks are less likely to offer higher fixed deposit rates to attract Singaporeans to park cash with them.

But when liquidity in the market is tight and interbank rates rise, local banks will offer more attractive rates to convince Singapore savers not to switch to foreign rivals.

Why is it important?

Sibor is a key component used by banks in setting their home loan rates.

A blend of different interest rates - such as one-month, three-month and even 12-month Sibors - is typically used by banks to set fixed or variable rates for home loans.

The three-month Sibor is a common benchmark rate used by the banks to adjust their deposit rates. By monitoring it, you can get an indication of where banks are headed next with their fixed deposit and savings account rates.

Sibor is also used to set rates for so-called transparent mortgage packages offered by the three local banks as well as Standard Chartered, HSBC and Citibank.

These are linked directly to Sibor or another publicly disclosed rate, such as the Central Provident Fund (CPF) rate or the swap offered rate (SOR).

SOR is made up of Sibor plus a bank’s lending costs, and is currently at about 1.39 per cent, down from 3 per cent a year ago.

In a falling interest rate environment, mortgage rates linked to Sibor or SOR will also trend downwards.

Sibor tends to track the United States Federal Reserve funds rate, which has been slashed in recent weeks to 2.25 per cent as the Fed attempts to stave off an economic recession in the US. Sibor has plummeted from 2.94 per cent to 1.31 per cent over the past year, and economists say it might not have bottomed out yet.

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SAVERS are again feeling the pinch as interest rates continue to fall, further squeezing what meagre returns they might get on bank deposits. Citibank, Maybank and Standard Chartered Bank (Stanchart) have all trimmed rates for their high interest savings accounts given the fall in the rate banks pay each other to borrow cash.

This rate - the Singapore Interbank Offered Rate (Sibor) - hit a 12-month low of 1.25 per cent last month. It has fallen steadily from 2.88 per cent a year ago, and economists say it will drop further.

With their own margins under pressure, banks have responded by trimming rates for customers.

Maybank has cut rates for iSAVvy, an online savings account, from 1.08 per cent to 0.88 per cent a year for a daily balance of $5,000 to $50,000.

Stanchart’s rate for its eSaver online savings product is 1.08 per cent a year, down a tad from a month ago when it paid 1.2 per cent for deposits from $50,000 to $199,999.

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The base rate for Citibank’s Step-Up Interest Account - it pays progressively higher rates as the monthly balance increases - has fallen by more than half to 0.3 per cent a year.

Mr Robin Chua, the head of deposits at Citibank Singapore, said the revised rate of 0.3 per cent is competitive compared with rates for other typical savings accounts.

‘The maximum Step-Up interest rate, at 1.2 per cent a year, is actually in line with what the industry offers on a Singdollar, 12-month time deposit,’ he added.

DBS Group Holdings, United Overseas Bank and OCBC Bank have also adjusted some of their fixed deposit rates downwards.

For instance, the three banks recently lowered their 12-month fixed deposit rate for amounts between $50,000 and $1 million to 1.2 per cent a year from 1.4 per cent earlier this year.

The leaner interest rates have prompted some consumers to shop around for the best offers in town.

Client servicing staff Mak Wei Jiat recently closed her eSaver account at Stanchart and moved the money to a Maybank iSAVvy account.

‘It may be only a small change in interest rates, but it can add up to a lot when you’re factoring in a big sum,’ she said.

IT operations manager Calvin Chin said with inflation climbing and interest rates declining, he will be earning less on his savings.

Meanwhile, with the share market so volatile, people like himself will be cautious about committing themselves to risky investments.

‘For the man in the street, besides keeping cash at home, the option available to him is to continue to keep savings in a bank,’ complains the unhappy 38-year-old.

Economists believe saving rates here could head lower in the near term, partly because of interest rate cuts in the United States and a strengthening Singapore dollar.

‘We think Sibor will trend below 1 per cent by the second half of the year, and stay low for a while,’ said Stanchart economist Alvin Liew, who also believes the US will be in for a protracted recession.

OCBC Bank economist Selena Ling feels any turnaround in Sibor is likely to come only when there is greater clarity over the US recession, what end-point the Federal Reserve sets for its rate-cutting cycle and what monetary policy expectations Singapore’s central bank has.

Singapore Straits Times Sunday 6th and Monday 7th April

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