Independent business review (IBR)

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

// THE SHORT ANSWER

An independent business review is a report on a struggling borrower, carried out by an accounting firm the lender chooses and usually paid for by the borrower, on whether the business is viable, what it needs and what the lender's security would realise. The term is mainly British; in Australia and New Zealand the same work is usually called an investigating accountant's report. The lender uses it to choose between continued support, a restructuring and enforcement, and because the reviewer's scope and findings frame the negotiation that follows, the terms of reference matter as much as the conclusions.

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.