Loan rates can be separated into two major components – the interest rate paid to depositors and the rate added on by banks. That difference between the deposit rate and the loan rate is commonly referred to as the spread. The size of banking spreads serves as an indicator of efficiency in the financial sector because it reflects the costs of intermediation that banks incur (including normal profits). Some of these costs and are imposed by the macroeconomic, regulatory and institutional environment in which banks operate while others are attributable to the internal characteristics of the banks.
