Two- and five-year UK swap rates were sitting close to 4.6% at the start of November 2026. Chatham Financial's rate table put the two-year SONIA swap at 4.596% and the five-year at 4.617% for 3 November, and the Bank of England's own curve for the same day reads 4.620% and 4.635%. Before the Bank's 12pm decision on 5 November 2026, Bank Rate stood at 3.75%, unchanged since 18 December 2025, so the two-year swap sat about 0.85 percentage point above it.
A year earlier the two-year swap was 1.09 points lower. The premium over Bank Rate is consistent with markets pricing a higher Bank Rate, and the Bank also points to elevated risk premia. Swap moves have been a main reason fixed mortgage deals ended up much dearer than in January while Bank Rate stood still. Moneyfacts' 4 November release said "a BBR hike of 0.25% is expected tomorrow" (BBR is its shorthand for the Bank Base Rate). Every figure here was published before the decision.
One day, two sources, slightly different numbers
Different publishers show slightly different figures for the same day, so it helps to know what each one is. The Bank of England builds its curve from overnight index swaps, instruments that "settle on overnight unsecured interest rates (the SONIA rate in the UK)", using market data it credits to Bloomberg Finance L.P. and its own calculations. Chatham Financial publishes a table of SONIA swap rates by tenor. Here is 3 November on both, beside Chatham's figures from a year earlier.
| Tenor | Chatham SONIA swap, 3 Nov 2026 | Bank of England OIS curve, 3 Nov 2026 | Chatham SONIA swap, 4 Nov 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 4.425% | 4.423% | 3.612% |
| 2 years | 4.596% | 4.620% | 3.502% |
| 5 years | 4.617% | 4.635% | 3.571% |
| 10 years | 4.737% | 4.778% | 3.871% |
| Bank Rate on that date | 3.75% | 3.75% | 4.00% |
The two sources agree to within 0.041 point at every tenor. The Bank explains why its numbers can differ from market quotes: its yields "are derived from a fitted curve" and "may differ to those of other institutions due to the method of calculation used". Chatham's 2 October column gives the direction of travel. The two-year was 4.526% and the five-year 4.611% then, so over the month the two-year rose 0.07 point and the five-year about 0.01.
Two broker pages show why figures on different sites rarely match exactly. MFB's money-markets page credits its swap rates to Chatham, while the rates page of Albion Financial Advice, an FCA-authorised broker, says it is "Updated daily from Bank of England data" and showed the Bank's 4.620% and 4.635%. If two sites disagree by a few hundredths, check whose curve they are quoting.
The bigger catch for anyone searching for today's rate is timing. The Bank aims to publish each day's curves "by noon on the following business day". When checked early on 5 November UK time, Chatham's table showed its latest column as "X.XXXX" and labelled 3 November "2 days prior", and Bluegamma's free SONIA page showed "Last update: November 3, 2026, 16:30 (London)". The free figures available that morning were one to two days old. Quoted mortgage rates lag swaps anyway, through what the Bank calls "standard lags in pass-through", as the month-by-month table below shows.
Why the swaps sit almost a point above Bank Rate
An overnight index swap involves the exchange at maturity of a payment linked to a predefined interest rate for one "linked to the compounded overnight interest rate that has prevailed over the life of the contract", and SONIA "is typically reasonably close to Bank Rate". So a two-year swap is roughly the market's price for the average overnight rate over the next two years. The Bank leans on the same instruments: since the August 2009 Inflation Report, the Bank Rate path behind its forecasts "has been based exclusively on OIS rates".
A year ago the gap pointed the other way. On 4 November 2025 Chatham's two-year swap was 3.502%, below the 4.00% Bank Rate then in force, and the Bank cut to 3.75% on 18 December 2025. Bank Rate had not moved since that December cut, yet on 3 November the two-year swap was 1.09 points higher than a year earlier and the five-year 1.05 points higher.
The September 2026 minutes give the context. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 6–3 to hold Bank Rate at 3.75%, with Megan Greene, Catherine L Mann and Huw Pill voting to raise it to 4%. Nearly all respondents to the Bank's Market Participants Survey had expected no change at that meeting, and their median expectations "implied a prolonged period of unchanged Bank Rate". The short-term interest rate curve told a different story: it "was upward sloping", "peaking at around 4.9% by end-2027". Beyond the near term, the minutes said, elevated risk premia "were thought to remain a material contributor to the upward slope in the market curve". The Bank's interest-rate page, summarising that decision, noted that energy prices "are still volatile due to the Middle East conflict".
My read: the gap between the two-year swap and Bank Rate is the quickest single check on where the market thinks rates are heading, as long as you remember it carries a risk premium as well as a forecast. A year ago the gap was negative, and the next move was a cut. On 3 November it was about +0.85 point. That does not guarantee a rise, and in September the survey median did not point to one. What the climb in swaps has done is push up borrowing costs: the minutes record "full and fast pass-through from increases in short-term OIS rates to key lending rates faced by UK households and businesses".
How much lenders add on top, month by month
The Bank pairs mortgage rates with swaps in its own charts. In the July 2026 Monetary Policy Report, the reference rate for two-year fixed mortgages at 75% and 90% LTV "is the two-year OIS rate", shown as monthly averages. The table below applies that pairing to 2026 with the Bank's data and extends it to five-year fixes against the five-year rate: the average of each day's two- and five-year OIS figure, against the Bank's quoted rates for 75% LTV fixes. Quoted rates are advertised rates weighted by lenders' business volumes, using each lender's "lowest available" rate at that LTV, with fees left out of the rate. Read them as a volume-weighted average of lenders' best advertised deals, not the single best deal on the market or what every borrower pays.
| 2026 | 2-yr OIS, monthly average | 2-yr fix, 75% LTV | Gap | 5-yr OIS, monthly average | 5-yr fix, 75% LTV | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 3.46% | 3.93% | 0.47 | 3.65% | 3.94% | 0.29 |
| Feb | 3.40% | 3.97% | 0.57 | 3.62% | 4.00% | 0.38 |
| Mar | 3.97% | 4.45% | 0.48 | 4.00% | 4.42% | 0.42 |
| Apr | 4.12% | 5.14% | 1.02 | 4.11% | 4.96% | 0.85 |
| May | 4.24% | 4.91% | 0.67 | 4.25% | 4.77% | 0.52 |
| Jun | 4.08% | 4.80% | 0.72 | 4.11% | 4.62% | 0.51 |
| Jul | 4.16% | 4.79% | 0.63 | 4.23% | 4.58% | 0.35 |
| Aug | 4.20% | 4.92% | 0.72 | 4.29% | 4.78% | 0.49 |
| Sep | 4.53% | 5.13% | 0.60 | 4.60% | 4.98% | 0.38 |
| Oct | 4.65% | n/a | n/a | 4.71% | n/a | n/a |
October's quoted rates were not yet in the Bank's database on 5 November, hence the n/a cells. Two patterns stand out. The first is the lag. The two-year OIS average jumped 0.57 point from February to March, but the quoted two-year fix rose only 0.48 point in March and then another 0.69 point in April, when its gap over the swap peaked at 1.02 points. The Bank described the same lag in July: rates on mortgage products priced off these references were "around 40 basis points lower than in April", reflecting "standard lags in pass-through", and its staff find that increases "tend to be passed through to mortgage rates more quickly than decreases when movements in reference rates are large or volatile".
The second is that the gap has stayed above its January level since April. In January the two-year fix sat 0.47 point above the month's average two-year swap. From May to September the gap was 0.60 to 0.72 point in every month, which makes that range the recent guide to what lenders add at 75% LTV; across January to September it ran from 0.47 to 1.02. The five-year gap ran at 0.35 to 0.52 from May, against 0.29 in January. A higher loan-to-value costs more on top: the Bank's 90% LTV two-year fix averaged 5.37% in September, 0.24 point above the 5.13% at 75%. If a fall in house prices could push you into a higher band, our explainer on what a 10% price drop does to your equity shows the arithmetic.
One more detail matters if you are choosing a term. On Chatham's 3 November table the five-year swap was only 0.021 point above the two-year. In the Bank's series the five-year was 0.14 to 0.21 point cheaper in June to September, while Moneyfacts has it 0.03 point dearer, so the choice depends on how long you want certainty as well as the rate.
Moneyfacts' averages: 5.97% for two years, 6.00% for five
Moneyfacts publishes a different measure, and its numbers are higher. Its average two-year fixed rate was 5.97% at the start of November 2026 and its average five-year fix 6.00%, with rates taken "as at the first available day of the month". The two-year average was 4.83% in January and 4.94% in November 2025. Moneyfacts calls the latest level a three-year high and ties lenders' repricing to "swap rate volatility". It also names names: the lowest two-year fixed rates from Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Bank, NatWest and Santander "remain 0.44% higher on average versus the start of September".
Those averages sit 1.37 and 1.38 points above Chatham's 3 November two- and five-year swaps, against September gaps of 0.60 and 0.38 in the Bank's series. The comparison is rough: the Moneyfacts figures are taken at the start of the month and the swaps on 3 November, and the release does not break its averages down by LTV. The Bank's series, by contrast, averages each lender's lowest advertised rate at one LTV, weighted by business volume.
The same release puts a number on falling onto a revert rate. Its average standard variable rate is 7.13%; on its example of a £250,000 repayment mortgage over 25 years, that means £1,788 a month against £1,606 at the 5.97% two-year average, or £182 a month more on the revert rate.
How to check the number yourself, and what 5 November adds
The free official source is the Bank's yield curves page. Its "Latest yield curve data" download contains a workbook called "OIS daily data current month"; on the "4. spot curve" tab each row is one day and the column headings are maturities in years, so the 2 and 5 columns give the two- and five-year figures. The Bank's daily and month-end archives sit on the same page for anyone who wants the history. Use the two-year rate when you are looking at two-year fixes and the five-year for five-year fixes. Albion's rates page puts the pricing plainly: fixed rates are "built on the cost of locking in money for two or five years in the swap market, plus the lender's margin".
The Bank's 5 November 2026 package, its Monetary Policy Summary, minutes and November Monetary Policy Report, is scheduled for 12pm UK time. For swap watchers the useful parts are the vote and the market curve the Bank conditions its forecasts on, built as "a 15-day average of the instantaneous forward OIS rates". In July's Report that curve "rises to around 4.2% by the latter half of 2027"; by the September meeting the minutes described the short-term curve peaking at around 4.9% by end-2027. The two descriptions are not built identically, but November's Report will show where the market curve sits now and give a rough read on how far expectations have moved. US mortgage rates are tracked differently; our guide to Freddie Mac's weekly PMMS readings explains that series.
Sources
- Bank of England · Yield curves (overview and FAQs) — OIS curves settle on SONIA, fitted-curve method, continuous compounding, next-business-day noon publication, archives, spreadsheet layout, OIS-based Bank Rate path, data sources
- Bank of England · Latest yield curve data (ZIP, OIS daily data current month, 4. spot curve) — 1-, 2-, 5- and 10-year OIS spot rates for 3 November 2026
- Bank of England · Archive OIS daily data (ZIP, OIS daily data 2025 to present, 4. spot curve) — daily 2- and 5-year OIS spot rates used for the 2026 monthly averages
- Bank of England · Official Bank Rate history — Bank Rate changes on 7 August 2025 and 18 December 2025
- Bank of England · Interest rates and Bank Rate — current Bank Rate, next decision date, energy-price context
- Bank of England · Upcoming MPC dates — 5 November 2026 Summary, minutes and Monetary Policy Report
- Bank of England · Upcoming events — 12pm release time for the November 2026 Summary, minutes and Report
- Bank of England · Monetary Policy Summary and minutes, September 2026 — 6-3 vote to hold at 3.75%, three votes for 4%, market curve peaking around 4.9% by end-2027, pass-through to lending rates
- Bank of England · Monetary Policy Report, July 2026 — two-year OIS as the reference rate for two-year fixed mortgages, monthly averages, lags and asymmetric pass-through, July market curve
- Bank of England · Interactive Database, quoted mortgage rates IUMBV34, IUMBV42, IUMB482 — monthly 2-year and 5-year 75% LTV and 2-year 90% LTV fixed rates, January to September 2026
- Bank of England · Further details about quoted household interest rates data — quoted rates are weighted monthly averages of advertised rates, lowest rate per LTV band, fees excluded from the rate
- Chatham Financial · European market rates (SONIA swaps) — SONIA swap rates for 3 November 2026 and 4 November 2025 at 1, 2, 5 and 10 years
- Moneyfacts · Mortgage rates hit three-year high (4 November 2026) — average two- and five-year fixed rates, SVR, monthly comparison table, repayment example
- Bluegamma · SONIA swap rates UK — last-update stamp on a free SONIA swap page
- Albion Financial Advice · Current UK rates — FCA-authorised broker page using Bank of England data; fixed rates as two- or five-year swap cost plus margin
- Bank of England · Yield curve terminology and concepts — definition of an overnight index swap and SONIA
- MFB · Money markets — broker page that credits its swap rates to Chatham
Editorial note
This article was prepared with the help of AI tools and checked against the sources listed above on 2026-11-05. Worked examples are illustrative unless a source is cited. Read our editorial standards, or tell us if you spot an error.