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GLOSSARYTERMS AS A CREDIT DESK USES THEM

Specific security agreement (SSA)

What is a specific security agreement, and how is it different from a GSA?

ONE OF 366 TERMS · FREE · NO SIGNUP

BY MICHAEL SHANG · SIXTEEN YEARS IN COMMERCIAL BANKING · UPDATED

// THE SHORT ANSWER

A specific security agreement is security over one or more named assets, such as a vehicle, a machine or a set of plant, rather than over everything a company owns. It is common in equipment and vehicle finance in New Zealand and Australia, where it is registered on the PPSR against the asset, often by serial number. When it finances the asset's purchase and is registered in time, it can rank ahead of a bank's earlier general security over that asset, so a lender searches the register for specific security to see which of the borrower's plant its own charge will not reach.

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.

// WHAT IT IS NOT

A general security agreement covers all of a company's present and future assets; a specific security agreement covers only the assets it names, and is often held by a financier other than the main bank.

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SECURITY AND RANKING

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