Four-eyes principle (maker-checker)
What is the four-eyes principle in a bank, and where does it fail?
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BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED
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The four-eyes principle requires that a transaction or decision be made by one person and checked or approved by a second, independent one before it takes effect. In lending it separates the banker who proposes a loan from the credit officer who approves it, and in operations the person who keys a facility, a security release or a payment from the person who checks it, often called maker and checker. It catches errors and means a fraud needs two people, but it weakens when the checker only confirms what is put in front of them, or when the second check is dropped under volume.
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.
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