Debenture (security document)

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED 2026-11-06

// THE SHORT ANSWER

In UK lending a debenture is the security document in which a company gives its lender fixed and floating charges over all its assets, usually with assignments of receivables, insurances and key contracts. It must be registered at Companies House within 21 days of being created, or the security is void against a liquidator, an administrator and the company's other creditors. It does the work a general security agreement does in New Zealand and Australia, where the word debenture more often means a debt security issued to investors, so a debenture in a borrower's accounts may be its own borrowing rather than a bank's charge.

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.