Fed awards $316 billion of term deposits in test auction
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve awarded $316.020 billion (201 billion pounds) of seven-day term deposits to banks, a record amount, at a test auction held on Monday, it said in a statement on Tuesday.
The U.S. central bank allotted them to 85 banks which will receive an interest rate of 0.28 percent.
This was higher than the $307.723 billion in deposits awarded a week earlier to 80 banks which received an interest rate of 0.27 percent.
The Fed has ramped up testing of its term deposit facility after the 2008 financial crisis to help policymakers drain cash from the banking system when they decide to tighten monetary policy.
On Sept. 4, the Fed said it plans to conduct a series of eight seven-day TDF operations starting in October. These tests will have an early withdrawal feature in which banks can enter the TDF and pull the money out before the maturity date if they pay a charge.
In the first four operations, there was a $20 billion cap per bank and the interest rate paid on the deposit was set at 0.26 percent. The next four operations, the interest rate paid will rise "in small steps" but it will not go above 0.30 percent.
(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
