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PPSR registrations due to expire

20 February 2019

The Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR) was established seven years ago by the Australian Financial Security Authority and is a national online register that allows security interests in personal property (such as cars and equipment) to be registered. On 30 January 2019, the PPSR will be seven years old and as such many registrations may now have expired, or be approaching their expiry date. If you have interests registered and haven’t checked the expiry date, we encourage you to log into the PPSR and request a free 'registrations due to expire report'.

What is the PPSR

For those of you unfamiliar with the PPSR, it is a central registry where:

  • You can register a claim over property that you have leased, financed or sold under invoice or consignment terms to protect your interest in the property;
  • You can check if an item of personal property has a claim over it. For example, you can check to make sure there isn’t a claim over a 2nd hand car you may wish to purchase which for a small fee is a worthwhile exercise to do.

Personal property includes:

  • Cars, motorcycles, caravans and boats;
  • Livestock;
  • Inventory;
  • Equipment;
  • Intangible property;
  • Financial property.

Why registration is important

The register is based on a first-come first-served approach. Therefore, if you hold an interest in any personal property it is important that you register that interest as soon as possible to protect your claim over that property, and to ensure that you have first priority (assuming no other interests have already been registered).

For example, if you sell personal property under finance to someone else – having your interest registered will protect that interest should the other person go into bankruptcy, try to subsequently sell the property without informing you, or try to use that property as collateral for other debt. Likewise, if you lease personal property to a business  having that interest registered will protect that interest should the business enter insolvency or the business owner try to on-sell those leased assets.

Why you can’t ignore the 7 year anniversary of the PPSR

There are three options available when registering an interest on the PPSR:

  • 7 years or less;
  • Between 7 years and 25 years;
  • Indefinite period.

If you registered your interest in property when the PPSR first came into existence (i.e. January 2012) and selected the 7 year option, your registration has now probably lapsed, or is due to lapse shortly. You therefore should check the expiry dates for any registrations you have and:

  • Re-register any interests in property that have lapsed where you still have the interest in the property;
  • Extend any registrations about to lapse;
  • Make a note of the dates when any other registrations will lapse at a future point, so that you can review and extend these registrations as required before they lapse;
  • Remove any registrations where you no longer have an interest in the property.

If you are affected by the 7-year anniversary, it is important that you check your registrations as soon as possible. If you don’t:

  • Where there is a second security registrant against that property, once  your registration lapses their registration will be bumped to first priority;
  • Someone else could come in and register an interest in the property, and on the first-in-first-served basis, their claim will generally have priority.

For further information on the PPSR, please contact your Boyce accountant or refer to:

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