Skip to content
GLOSSARYTERMS AS A CREDIT DESK USES THEM

Cash dominion (springing dominion)

What is cash dominion in an asset-based loan, and what triggers it?

ONE OF 416 TERMS · FREE · NO SIGNUP

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// THE SHORT ANSWER

Cash dominion is an asset-based lending arrangement in which a borrower's collections are paid into an account the lender controls and applied, usually daily, to reduce the revolving loan, so the business funds itself only by drawing again against its borrowing base. Under full dominion it runs from the start; under springing dominion, common for stronger borrowers, it switches on when availability falls below an agreed level for a set period, or on a default. It turns every receipt into a repayment: the lender sees its collateral becoming cash, and a borrower that triggers it loses control of its own cash when cash is tightest.

BASIS  Practitioner judgment from sixteen years in commercial banking, set out in How Bankers Think (Highbank Press, 2026). Every borrower on this site is a composite constructed for teaching, not a client. The market is mid-market commercial lending as practised in New Zealand and Australia; where a convention differs elsewhere, the page says so.

// THE FULL PAGE

Cash Dominion: a Worked Example →

Every dollar collected repays the loan before the business can spend it.

// WHAT IT IS NOT

A collection account is the account customers pay into; cash dominion is the arrangement under which the lender sweeps that account against the loan, either from the start or once a trigger is met.

// WORKED IN

// NEXT TO IT

RECEIVABLES AND TRADE

All 416 terms on one page