Did your registrations migrate to the PPSR without an end date?

WHO SHOULD READ THIS

• Any secured party whose registrations migrated to the PPSR when it was first introduced should ensure their registrations effectively migrated and rectify as required.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

• Secured parties have until 31 January 2017 to rectify any issues in their migrated registrations.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO

• Review your registrations that migrated to the PPSR and ensure there were no defects. If there are defects, these need to be corrected before 31 January 2017.

When the Personal Property and Securities Register (PPSR) commenced on 30 January 2012, millions of security interests migrated to the PPSR from various registers of security interests in Australia. The most common migrated registration was from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC’s) Register of Company Charges.

At the time the registrations were migrated to the PPSR, a number of registrations were left incomplete due to missing or incomplete fields that are now required by the Personal Property Securities Act 2009 (Cth) (PPSA) but were not previously required by the legislation. A common example in relation to ASIC’s Register of Company Charges is where multiple chargees were previously recorded, however, only the security interest in favour of the first listed chargee migrated to the PPSR.

The PPSA provided a grace period of 60 months to allow time to rectify registrations that were migrated without an end date. This period is coming to an end on 31 January 2017.

The PPSR has written to affected parties to remind them of the impending deadline. Many banks and financial institutions have since re-registered their migrated security interests to address these and other concerns. If you had any registrations migrated to the PPSR which were incomplete, you must act to rectify the registration before the deadline of 31 January 2017.

If you don’t take action before 31 January 2017, you may put yourself at risk if your registration cannot be found by searching the PPSR.

Some of the fields you may wish to review include are:

• serial numbers, and
• grantor details.

This publication covers legal and technical issues in a general way. It is not designed to express opinions on specific cases. It is intended for information purposes only and should not be regarded as legal advice. Further advice should be obtained before taking action on any issue dealt with in this publication.