The Personal Property Securities Amendment Regulations 2018 will come into force on 1 October 2018 and make a number of technical amendments to the Personal property Securities Regulations 2001.
A key issue will be to ensure that from 1 October if the debtor is an organisation other than a partnership or trust the information a secured party must now enter must include the New Zealand Business Number ("NZBN") of the debtor (if it has one).
Moving forward, the Register will allow for searches under the NZBN as well as a company number.
Current registrations do not include NZBN's and the Registrar will be updating many of these (we assume based on the company number registered) but may contact secured parties to ensure that NZBN's are added within two months of the amended regulations coming into effect.
Other key changes include the ability to register against a limited partnership (rather than describe it as a normal partnership) and to no longer require a fax number as a contact detail.
We consider that all secured parties should consider updating the register themselves in respect of existing debtors to ensure that an NZBN is listed as required and ensure after 1 October that all new registrations list the NZBN. It will potentially invalidate registration or otherwise undermine the perfection of security (and therefore its priority) if an NZBN is not included. A financing statement could also be held to be misleading if the NZBN is not included in new registrations from 1 October or updated for older registrations within two months of this legislation coming into effect.
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© McVeagh Fleming 2018
This article is published for general information purposes only. Legal content in this article is necessarily of a general nature and should not be relied upon as legal advice. If you require specific legal advice in respect of any legal issue, you should always engage a lawyer to provide that advice.