Non-Bank Financial Institutions (NBFIs)’s cost of funds has been increasing for the last couple of years.
Latest Cost of Funds Index (CoFI), representing the weighted average interest rate of the NBFIs, brought the trend to light.
The index showed that the cost of all the interest-bearing funds increased by 0.35 points to 8.72 points in March from 8.37 points in February this year.
It was 7.56 in November last which increased to 7.95 in December and jumped further to 8.16 points in January this year.
Again, the adjusted cost of funds or cost of interest-bearing funds (excluding the low-cost specific purpose scheme funds) increased to 9.53 points in March from 9.10 points in February, which was 8.87 in January.
CoFI serves as the reference rate for pricing the variable interest loan products. In setting the variable interest rate of a new loan, NBFIs add a margin to the industry CoFI or Adjusted CoFI .
Bangladesh Bank issued guidelines on the Base Rate System for the NBFIs n 2013. Currently, there are 34 NBFIs in the country.