Variable-Rate Loans

How to set up a variable-rate loan and record each rate fixing from your bank's notice.

A variable-rate loan does not have one rate for its whole term. Its rate is reset at fixed intervals, for example every three months, to a reference rate (such as 3-month EURIBOR) plus an agreed spread (margin). This page explains how LoanMonitor handles such loans and what you enter.

You provide the rates

LoanMonitor does not fetch market rates such as EURIBOR automatically. Instead, you record each new rate from the rate-fixing notice your bank sends you (German: Zinsanpassungsmitteilung).

This is deliberate: the rate your bank notifies is the one that is actually charged on your loan. Taking it straight from the notice means your schedule matches your bank's figures, including any rounding, floor or special terms in your contract, rather than a generic market value.

Everything up to your latest fixing is based on real rates. Everything after it is a projection (see below) until you enter the next fixing.

Key terms

Term	Meaning
Reference index	The market rate your loan follows: EURIBOR, €STR, SOFR or Other.
Tenor	The EURIBOR maturity, e.g. 3 months. €STR is an overnight rate, so it has no tenor.
Reference rate	The index value your bank fixed for the next interest period. It can be negative.
Spread	The bank's margin added to the reference rate, e.g. 1.85 %.
All-in rate	Reference rate + spread, limited by the floor and cap. This is the rate the schedule uses.
Floor / Cap	Optional lower and upper limits on the all-in rate. Many contracts have a 0 % floor.
Reset frequency	How often the rate is reset, e.g. quarterly. It can differ from the payment frequency.
Fixing date	The day the bank fixed the rate, usually two days before the new period starts.

Create a variable-rate loan

Open Loans and start a new loan.

Under Rate type, choose Variable (reference index + spread).

Choose the Reference index and, for EURIBOR, the Tenor.

Enter the Spread (%) from your contract.

Enter the Reset frequency and the First reset date (usually the disbursement date).

Optionally enter a Floor rate (%) and Cap rate (%).

Enter the Initial reference rate (%) from your first bank notice. LoanMonitor shows the resulting all-in rate.

Finish the wizard. The repayment schedule is calculated immediately.

Rates are entered as percentages, e.g. 3.90 for 3.90 %.

Record a new rate fixing

Each time your bank sends a rate-fixing notice:

Open the loan and go to Adjustments → Interest rate.

Click Add period.

Set Valid from to the start of the new interest period.

Enter the Reference rate from the notice. The Spread is prefilled from the loan's terms. Change it only if your bank's notice shows a different margin.

Optionally enter the Fixing date and attach the bank's notice as the Fixing document, so the source is kept with the loan.

Save. The schedule recalculates from that date on.

If the date you enter does not match the loan's reset schedule, LoanMonitor shows a warning: "This fixing date falls outside the configured reset schedule." It does not block you (off-cycle changes happen), but it helps catch typos.

You can also enter a fixing that is in the past. The schedule is recalculated from that point, so a late notice is no problem.

Projected rows

After your latest fixing, LoanMonitor does not guess where interest rates will go. It keeps the last all-in rate flat until the loan ends. Rows calculated this way are marked Projected in the schedule, and a note above it tells you which fixing the projection is based on.

Projected interest and installments are an assumption, not a forecast. They change as soon as you record the next fixing. Exports also mark projected rows, so they are never mixed up with confirmed figures.

No interest rate curves, by design

LoanMonitor does not model interest rate curves: no yield curves, forward curves or swap curves, and no future reference rates derived from them. A curve is a valuation tool. It answers "what does the market price 3-month EURIBOR at in two years?". It never answers the question a loan monitor has to answer: "what will my bank actually charge me?"

That is why LoanMonitor follows a BYOL principle, bring your own license, a term borrowed from the cloud world. The rates in your loans are the ones your bank fixed and notified to you. You already hold them and are already entitled to use them, and no licensed market-data feed sits between your bank's notice and your schedule. What this means for you:

Every confirmed figure is traceable to a bank notice, never to a model assumption.
Projections are honest. After the last fixing the all-in rate carries flat and is marked as projected, instead of following a curve that looks precise but moves every day.
No benchmark licensing. LoanMonitor does not source, store or redistribute EURIBOR or other benchmark data, so no data license is needed on either side to use it.
Fixed and variable loans sit in one portfolio with the same confirmed-versus-projected logic, so totals and exports stay comparable.

Scenario views such as "what if EURIBOR rises by 100 basis points?" and curve-based projections are on our roadmap. When they arrive they will sit next to your bank's figures as clearly labelled assumptions, never replace them.

Automate it

If you use an AI assistant or an automation tool (for example n8n) with the LoanMonitor MCP connector, the add_rate_fixing tool records a fixing, including the bank's notice as a document, in one step. A typical flow: the bank's email arrives, the automation reads the notice, and the fixing is filed on the right loan. The tool needs write access. See Connect AI assistants (MCP).

Good to know

The Loans list has a Rate type column and filter, so you can find all variable loans at a glance.
To correct the first fixing made when the loan was created, edit the loan. Later fixings are managed under Adjustments → Interest rate.
Every change to the variable-rate terms or a fixing is recorded in the loan's change history.

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