Title insurance

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

// THE SHORT ANSWER

Title insurance is a policy that pays out if a property's title proves defective in a way that costs the owner or the lender money, such as a forged discharge, an unregistered interest, a missing easement or building work done without consent. Where most land sits on a state-guaranteed register, as in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, it fills narrower gaps than elsewhere, but lenders still meet it in refinancing, where some accept a policy in place of certain searches, and on purchases where a known defect is insured rather than fixed. Its exclusions decide what has actually been covered.

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.