How to run a PPSR search and read the result

The Personal Property Securities Register is a notice board, not a ledger. It records that someone has claimed a security interest in personal property, so that anyone dealing with that property is on notice. Understanding that one sentence prevents most of the mistakes made when reading a result.

Personal property here means everything other than land: vehicles, plant and equipment, stock in trade, receivables, shares, livestock, intellectual property. Land interests are registered separately and are covered in how to check who owns a property.

The two searches, and when to use each

Debtor search

A debtor search asks what has been registered against a person or an organisation. For an organisation, search by the exact registered entity name or number rather than a trading name, which is why a company and director search normally runs first. For an individual, the register indexes by name and date of birth together. A search without the correct date of birth is unreliable in both directions: it can miss real registrations and can attach someone else's finance to your subject.

This is the search that matters for recovery work. It shows who else has an interest in the debtor's assets, and it shows priority by registration date, which is often the difference between a recoverable position and an unsecured queue.

Collateral search

A collateral search asks what has been registered against a specific serial numbered item. In practice this is nearly always a vehicle, searched by VIN or chassis number. Registration plate searching is not a substitute, because plates change and the register keys on the permanent identifier.

A clear collateral search is the standard check before buying an asset, and a registered interest is a warning that the item may be repossessed from a buyer who took it in good faith.

Reading a financing statement

A result is a financing statement, and five fields carry the weight.

The secured party. A bank, a finance company, a trade supplier, or a group entity. The identity often tells you the nature of the arrangement before you read anything else.

The registration date. Priority between competing interests generally runs by registration, so date order is the practical hierarchy. It also dates the underlying transaction with reasonable confidence.

The collateral description. This ranges from a specific serial numbered item to an all present and after acquired property description, which covers effectively everything the debtor owns and will own. The second kind, common for bank lending, is a strong signal about the debtor's overall encumbrance.

The expiry date. Registrations lapse if not renewed. A lapsed or expiring registration says something about the secured party's attention as well as the arrangement.

The debtor details as registered. These are recorded by the secured party and can be wrong or out of date. A registration against a former name is still a registration, which is one reason name variants are worth running.

The four common misreadings

Treating a registration as a debt. The register carries no balance. Discharge depends on the secured party filing it, and many do not do so promptly. A stale registration on a fully repaid facility is ordinary.

Treating a nil result as unencumbered. Some interests do not require registration to exist, registration can lag the transaction, and a wrong name search returns nothing convincingly. Nil means nothing was found under what you searched.

Ignoring the general security agreement. Focusing on the specific vehicle while missing an all present and after acquired property registration is the most expensive error on this list, because the general registration usually outranks the position you thought you had.

Searching a trading name. The register is keyed to legal identity. Searching the name on the invoice rather than the name on the register produces false comfort.

Where it fits

PPSR results are most useful read against other sources: insolvency status, property interests and company records together give a position, where any one alone gives a fragment. That combined view is described on the asset searches page, and the specifics of the source on the PPSR source page.

Recovery teams will find the wider workflow on the credit and collections page, and the litigation view in how to assess a debtor's asset position. Access is issued to verified professional users through the request access page.