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GLOSSARYTERMS AS A CREDIT DESK USES THEM

Information barrier

What is an information barrier in a bank, and what does it protect?

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BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

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An information barrier — a Chinese wall, in the older phrase — is the set of rules and the physical and system separations that stop confidential information held in one part of a bank from reaching another part that could use it: a lending team that knows a company is about to miss a payment, and a trading desk that deals in its shares. It is how a bank serves clients whose interests conflict without betraying either, and it holds only as long as the people inside it keep it; most breaches are a conversation, not a hack.

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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