Still haven’t found what I’m look­ing for… Teething Prob­lems with the PPSR

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More than three months after the go-live, sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems per­sist with the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the Per­son­al Prop­er­ty Secu­ri­ties Reg­is­ter (PPSR).

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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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