PPSR (Personal Property Securities Register)

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED 2026-11-01

// THE SHORT ANSWER

The Personal Property Securities Register is the public register, in New Zealand and Australia, of security interests over assets other than land — receivables, stock, vehicles, plant, and the general security a bank takes over a company. Registration is what makes a security interest hold against other creditors and a liquidator, and priority between secured parties generally follows the order of registration, with exceptions for financiers of specific goods. A credit desk searches the register before it lends, because it is where a business's other lenders, lessors and suppliers on retention of title show up, whether or not anyone mentioned them.

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.