All articles
Investing7 July 2026· 6 min read

The coupons of your inflation-linked bonds, calculated to the cent

The founder of Rebalix

A plain government bond has fixed coupons: 3% on €1,000 is €30 a year, done. An inflation-linked bond doesn’t: its coupon is revalued every day. Knowing how much you actually received isn’t a multiplication — which is why almost no tracker gets it right.

First things first
This article is about how we accurately record income you’ve already received. It is not advice to buy, sell or hold these bonds.

1. Why the coupon can’t be guessed «by eye»

A linker’s coupon is revalued for inflation through an indexation coefficient that changes every day. So the coupon that lands in your account isn’t a round number: it’s rate × coefficient-of-the-day. And that coefficient appears nowhere on your statement. Redoing it by hand, for every payment, is impractical — so most apps either skip it or estimate it roughly.

2. How we compute it: from the official figure, not an estimate

We don’t estimate. We take the official indexation coefficient published by each country’s debt agency — MEF (Italy), AFT (France), Finanzagentur (Germany), Tesoro Público (Spain) — and compute the coupon with the same convention they use: the international ICMA Actual/Actual standard, which also handles the «short» and «long» first coupons correctly. The result matches to the cent what you actually received.

3. Five families, two indices, one method

We cover 41 bonds. Almost all are linked to euro-area inflation; French OATi are the exception, tracking French consumer prices. Different indices, one method: the agency’s official figure.

FamilyCountryIndexOfficial source
BTP€iItalyEuro-area inflationMEF
OAT€iFranceEuro-area inflationAFT
Bund€iGermanyEuro-area inflationFinanzagentur
Inflation-linked ObligacionesSpainEuro-area inflationTesoro Público
OATiFranceFrench inflationAFT

4. What you see in Rebalix

Rebalix shows the past coupons of your linkers at the exact amount, tagged «from the official coefficient», with the net based on your tax residence — ready to confirm as income, so they feed your real return. And they update themselves at every new coupon, with nothing for you to do.

In short, the exact sum
Coefficient = reference index of the day ÷ the bond’s base index (source: the debt agency). Coupon = real rate ÷ frequency × coefficient at the payment date × ICMA Actual/Actual accrual. Where the official figure exists, we don’t recompute anything: we use it.
Disclaimer
Informational content, not advice or an investment solicitation. Rebalix records and computes your portfolio’s past; it does not recommend instruments or forecast future returns. Coupons are computed from published official coefficients; always check the actual amounts on your account.
Author
The founder of Rebalix
Founder of Rebalix. He spent decades in banking — from traditional banks to senior roles at firms specialised in wealth management, corporate and investment banking. After seeing how finance works from the inside, he built Rebalix to bring that same rigour to the side of the self-directed investor: explaining in plain words how a portfolio actually works — method, costs and discipline — without jargon or easy promises. He does not provide financial advice: the content is for informational and educational purposes.
All articles
Share:
Rebalix
© 2026 Rebalix · Made in Italy 🇮🇹BlogContact usSecurityMethodologyPrivacy PolicyTerms of ServiceCookie Policy
Important notice: Rebalix is solely a tool to support the management and monitoring of your personal portfolio. It does not provide financial advice, investment recommendations, or any service involving the buying or selling of financial instruments under applicable regulations. All investment decisions remain entirely your own responsibility.