Answer: The nominal interest rate is 11.40%.
We follow these steps to arrive at the answer:
We have the following information form the question
PV of a loan $15000
No. of periods 36
Equal Payment (EMI) $493.93
With this information, we can use the 'rate' function in excel to find the rate per period. The 'rate' function in excel uses the iteration process to compute the rate per period of an annuity.
The syntax in excel is =RATE(36,493.93,-15000).
This yields a rate of 0.95003% per month.
Once we have the monthly interest rate, we can find the nominal interest rate by:
[tex]Nominal interest rate = Monthly interest rate * 12[/tex]
[tex]Nominal interest rate = 0.009500349 * 12[/tex]
[tex]Nominal interest rate = 0.114004194[/tex]