More than three months after the go-live, significant problems persist with the reliability of the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR).
Migrated pre-PPSA registered security interests
The Registrar of the PPSR confirmed early on that a large number of errors and omissions occurred in the migration of data from ASIC and State & Territory databases to the PPSR. Work has been underway for some time to identify and correct those errors and omissions. It is uncertain when corrections will be completed. Until then, it will be necessary to perform (and pay for) three separate searches (by grantor ABN, grantor ACN and grantor name) to try to identify security interests. However, those searches cannot at present be relied on completely to identify all security interests that have been granted and/or registered pending correction of all migration-related errors and omissions in the PPSR. We are working with the Registrar, our registration agents and the PPSR user group to ascertain how greater certainty can be achieved in the meantime.
Post-PPSA registered security interests
As yet unidentified problems with the registration IT engine are causing a time lag of uncertain duration between the moment of registration of security interests on-line and the point at which those registered security interests become searchable. Accordingly, searches cannot be relied on completely as identifying all security interests that have been registered since 30 January 2012. Again, we are working with the Registrar, our registration agent and the PPSR user group to ascertain how greater certainty can be achieved until this problem is resolved. The timing of resolution is unclear.
Transitional security interests
Secured parties with pre-PPSA interests in personal property which were registered on registers that were not automatically migrated (eg IP Australia’s registers) have two years to re-register relevant interests on the PPSR, enjoying certain interim protections under the PPSA in the meantime. To identify interests in such property during the transition period, it will therefore be necessary to continue to search existing registers. The two year transition period also generally applies to other interests that previously were not capable of registration (eg retention of title arrangements). Such interests will only be searchable once registered on the PPSR. Until then, how to identify and deal with such interests will need to be assessed case by case (as in the past given that those interests were not previously searchable).
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