Should I register against the ACN or the Trust ABN?

My buyer has an ACN but also has a Trust ABN – should I register against the company or against the trust?

We would recommend both. 

One registration can be lodged against two different ‘grantors’, so there shouldn't be any additional expense.  However, at the very least, a registration should be lodged against the Trust ABN.

The below chart is a handy reference to identifying a grantor:

Grantor Type	Grantor Details Required
Sole Trader	Full Name (as per driver’s licence) and date of birth
Sole Trader acting as Trustee	Trust ABN (if the Trust does not have an ABN, as per ‘normal’ Sole Trader)
Partnership	ABN
Partnership acting as Trustee	Trust ABN (if the Trust does not have an ABN, as per ‘normal’ Partnership)
Partnership without an ABN	Full name and DOB of each partner (or ACN’s of each if a corporate partnership)
Company with an ACN and no Trust involved	ACN
Company with an ACN acting as Trustee	Trust ABN (if the Trust does not have an ABN, as per ‘normal’ Company)
Corporate entity without an ACN	Full name of the business as per articles of association
Government Entity	ABN
Trust	Trust ABN (if no ABN, use rules per the trustee)

Registering against Trusts

It’s been well over 4 years since I last dedicated a post here to the issue of trusts, so, while the earlier article still holds up well, it’s probably about time I revisited the subject and freshened up what we know.

Firstly, I’ll preface what follows with Recommendation 110 from the Official Review of the Personal Property Securities Act completed just over 2 years ago and, as far as I can tell, no closer to having the vast majority of its 394 recommendations adopted.

Recommendation 110: That the Regulations be amended so that a registration to perfect a security interest over trust assets should be made against the relevant details for the trustee, rather than the ABN or other identifying details for the trust.

Why did the Official Review make this recommendation?

Well, let’s look at what the rules for registration look like when a Trust is involved.

Unfortunately, those rules won’t be found in the Personal Property Securities Act itself, but in the Personal Property Securities Regulations 2010,  wherein you will be treated to some of the most convoluted ‘guidance’ I’ve come across in relation to the PPSA.

 

To save you the agony, I’ve summarised the key guidance:

• If the Trustee is a corporate body and has an ARSN (Australian Registered Scheme Number – pretty unlikely for trade credit transactions) then the registration should be lodged against the 9 digit ARSN.
• If the Trustee is any other kind of body (or individual) and the relevant Trust has an ABN, the registration should be lodged against the Trust’s ABN (this is probably the most likely scenario).
• If the Trustee is a corporate body but its Trust does not have an ABN (unlikely) then the registration should be lodged against the Trustee’s ACN.
• If the Trustee is an individual but the Trust does not have an ABN, then registrations should be against the individual’s details – usually, full name and date of birth.

The first problem that springs to mind lies with simply knowing whether the company that is interested in becoming your customer is acting as a Trustee or not.  Your potential customer may simply omit mentioning that they are acting on behalf of a Trust.  How is the poor supplier to know?

While the supplier may discover that there is a Trust, not knowing whether the potential customer is acting in their capacity as Trustee or purchasing in their own right will either leave the supplier open to opting for the wrong type of registration or going to the trouble and expense of lodging two registrations ‘just to be safe’.

Where does the supplier stand if goods are supplied to a company with a Trust that doesn’t have an ABN (and thus registered against the ACN of the company) only to find out later that an ABN has since been obtained for the Trust? 

Interestingly, the same rules that apply to identifying Grantors also apply to identifying Secured Parties when setting up their Secured Party Groups on the Register.  However, while failing to identify the Grantor in absolute accordance with the PPSA’s rules may lead to the registration being deemed ineffective, the situation is not as dire when it comes to identifying Secured Parties. 

As found in Future Revelation Ltd v Medica Radiology & Nuclear Medicine Pty Ltd[2013] NSWSC 1741, the determining factor will be whether the registration would be revealed during a properly conducted search – while it would not be found in the case of a wrongly identified Grantor, an incorrectly identified Secured Party’s registration would still show up in Grantor based search results.

In summary, where Trusts are involved, the PPSA’s registration rules are horrible, ill-conceived and confusing but… we’re stuck with them for the foreseeable future and, as far as companies are concerned, I advocate a belt & braces approach of lodging registrations against both the Trust ABN and the Trustee’s ACN.

Top 5 Registration Errors

I came across an article in ‘Lawyers Weekly’ a couple of days ago, suggesting that more than 80% of businesses listing on the PPSR have made errors that may limit or invalidate their rights.

While this doesn’t really give much idea of the scale of the problem – it certainly isn’t intended to mean that 80% of all registrations are somehow wrong – it clearly reinforces the idea that the PPSR is far more demanding than it should be for a public register.

So, what are the most common errors that businesses are making?

Based, purely on my own observations, the following are the top 5 key problem areas.

Identifying the Grantor – Businesses seem much more comfortable using ABNs than ACNs and attempt to stick them in wherever possible. To the extent that they will treat an ABN and ARBN as one and the same, shoehorning a version of the ABN into a field designed to identify (primarily) overseas companies registered in Australia.

PTY LTD and PTY companies will have an ACN and failing to use that ACN when lodging a registration against them will have serious consequences.

When it comes to the PPSR, there is no such thing as ‘close enough is good enough’.  Grantors must be identified strictly in accordance with the PPSA’s rules.  When a third party wants to find out what security interests exist against a given company, they are guided by the PPSR to search by ACN.  If a search under that company’s ACN does not reveal your security interest it will almost certainly be considered invalid.

Forgetting about the Trust – Unfortunately for those who like simple rules such as “always use a company’s ACN to lodge a registration”, there is an exception where Trusts are involved. 

Where a company is acting as trustee of a trust (and that trust holds an ABN) the registration should be lodged against the ABN of the Trust.  Given that it is possible for a company to purchase both in its own right and in its capacity as a trustee, I tend to advocate lodging a registration against both.

“I don’t understand the question so I’ll leave it blank” – I’m positive that lack of customer reference numbers (or similar) included in registrations has a lot to do with the fact that the PPSR’s chosen term for this is ‘Giving of Notice Identifier’.  It is hard to think of a more awkward, less user-friendly term.  However, while failing to make an entry in GONI won’t cause too much of a problem, leaving the ‘Purchase Money Security Interest’ option blank for the same reason will be a lot more problematic!

Anyone selling subject to a Retention of Title clause, under a consignment stock arrangement, or leasing goods will lose virtually all their much deserved priority should they fail to tick this box.  

Don’t understand the definition of a PMSI?  No worries just tick the box anyway when you’ve got a Retention of Title clause in your terms.

Not taking stock – Even when the terms should be relatively familiar, such as in the case of “Is the collateral Inventory?” we see frequent problems. When asking why a supplier didn’t designate their interest as being over inventory, answers have included, “but it wasn’t inventory, we had to cut it to shape for them”, “we had to order it in specially”, or simply, “I didn’t think it was important”.

Firstly, everything in a PPSR registration is important.  Secondly, if you are selling goods that your buyer is going to be on-selling, using as part of their own end-product for on-sale, or using up in a production process or similar, it will be inventory. Failure to identify it as such could easily mislead a debtor financier or factor into thinking they can take clear title to accounts receivables, for example.  And, under the PPSA, if an error in registration can mislead it will, more than likely, be deemed ineffective.

Processing Proceeds – ROT suppliers are leaving the ‘Are proceeds to be claimed?’ question blank far too frequently.  While they may know what proceeds are, what they may not be aware of is their entitlement to claim proceeds for the on-sale of the goods they have supplied.

As a general rule, if you tick the PMSI box, you should also tick the Proceeds box.

While there are plenty of other opportunities for mistakes to be made (claiming a control of assets you don’t have, poorly thought out collateral descriptions etc), the above certainly represent the conjunction of the most common and most impactful.

Of course, the biggest error would be not to lodge a registration at all!

Identifying Your Grantor for the PPSR

You may have an ACN, ARSN, ARBN, ABN, RBN or even a Name which means you will almost certainly have a choice as to how you identify your business.  

While we often see choice as a good thing, this will not necessarily be the case when every option means an additional fee-incurring search you might need to undertake on a national register.

The Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR) has been designed as a national, publicly accessible, database where anybody, for the price of a cup of coffee, can run a search to see what security interests are held against a particular business or individual.

Because of that design, if a person conducting a search, in accordance with the PPSR’s guidelines, against a particular business is unable to see a security interest you lodged against that business then your registration will, in all likelihood, be deemed invalid and your security interest will be rendered ineffective.

Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that, when registering your security interest on the PPSR, you don’t just correctly identify the business against which you are taking your security but you identify that business in strict accordance with the PPSA’s rules.

Thus, while you might accurately transpose ABC Pty Ltd’s ABN onto the register by way of identifying your ‘Grantor’, the PPSA’s rule for identifying Pty Ltd companies is to use that company’s 9 digit ACN – this isn’t just a preference or a helpful guideline, but a fixed, unwavering insistence.  Your use of the company’s ABN isn’t just going to be the cause of a minor hiccup, swiftly cleared up by a quick phone call to the liquidator, it will, almost certainly, mean the complete and total loss of your security interest.

So what are the PPSA’s rules?

Firstly, the issue is whether your Grantor is an individual or an organisation.

If your Grantor is an individual, then, regardless as to whether they have an ABN or trading name, they need to be identified on the PPSR by the individual’s full name and date of birth.

If the Grantor is not an individual then they will be deemed an organisation.  It doesn’t matter that they are a husband & wife partnership, a local football club or Woolworths, they are all organisations.

The rules for organisations

The first question the PPSR will ask is “Does the organisation have an ARSN?”

This is equivalent to being asked, as a first question, upon registering with a new doctor, whether you have a third nipple!

An ARSN is an Australian Registered Scheme Number.  It is a 9 digit number issued to Australian managed investment schemes by ASIC.  It is a unique identifier and no two schemes can have the same number.

Next up, you are asked if the organisation has an ACN.  

An ACN is an Australian Company Number, it comprises 9 digits and is issued by ASIC to all companies incorporated under the provisions of the Corporations Act.  All your Pty Ltd customers will have an ACN and, even though they may not put it front and centre on their letterhead or will prefer to use their ABN when completing credit applications, this is the number you must use to identify such businesses. 

The only exception to this might be where the Pty Ltd company is specifically acting as trustee for a trust and using the ABN of that trust.

If your customer does not have an ACN you’ll be asked whether they have an ARBN.  

This is a little more common that an ARSN and stands for an Australian Registered Body Number, also comprising 9 digits and also administered by ASIC.  ARBNs are primarily issued to foreign companies wishing to operate in Australia.  Again, if the ARBN holding company is acting as the trustee of a trust with its own ABN, any registration should be lodged against the ABN of that trust.

Do not confuse an ARBN with an ABN – the two are quite different. 

If the organisation doesn’t have a 9 digit ACN, ARBN or ARSN then you will be asked to choose an appropriate category for your Grantor: Partnership, Body Politic, Trust, or Other.

Partnerships

The PPSA doesn’t care if this is a partnership of one or more individuals, a partnership between companies or a partnership between individuals and companies.  If the partnership has an ABN then use that number to identify your Grantor. 

If the partnership doesn’t have an ABN (not just that you don’t know it but that it hasn’t actually been issued with an ABN) then a registration should be lodged identifying the Grantor by the constituent parts of its partnership.  That is to say, if the partnership comprises two individuals then lodge the registration against each of those individuals stating their full names and dates of birth; if the partnership is between two companies then lodge the registration against each of those companies stating their ACNs.  

The PPSR allows for more than one Grantor to be identified on the same registration.

Bodies Politic

This is an all-embracing term for local, state and federal government entities.  The Government’s ABN Lookup facility provides an easy way of identifying such bodies if the way they’ve named themselves isn’t sufficient giveaway in itself:

Or

Many suppliers decide that the risks are sufficiently low when dealing with Government buyers not to bother lodging registrations against them, others may find that the terms of purchase they are required to accept do not include provision for any security interest that can be lodged on the PPSR.

Trusts

I won’t waste your valuable reading time with any more whinging regarding trusts and the idea that a trust is legally able to grant a security interest or indeed can be considered a legal entity in its own right, suffice to say that, for the PPSA’s purposes, a trust may be a discretionary trust, fixed trust, unit trust, trading trust, or any of a number of variations.  Again, the ABN Lookup facility can be useful here.

Others

We’re now left with everything else that doesn’t fall into one of the above categories which will include many charities, independent schools, sporting associations, strata plans and co-operatives to name but a few.

As far as the PPSA is concerned, it doesn’t matter if such organisations have an ABN; if they are not an individual, don’t have an ACN, ARSN or ARBN, and are not a partnership, body politic or trust, they need to be identified simply by the name of the organisation.

Whinge

Quite why the PPSA chooses to break the identification of Grantors into these arbitrary categories largely escapes me.  ASIC readily allows for searching its database for any 9 digit number it administers regardless as to whether it is technically an ACN, ARSN or ARBN – why does the PPSA care?

What benefit accrues from breaking down ABN holders into categories?  If a partnership can have registrations lodged against its ABN why can’t strata plans and co-operatives?  Why add extra hoops for registrants and searchers alike to jump through?  Why add additional opportunities for errors that could render registrations invalid?

Resources

This post is already long enough, so I’ll post a separate article providing some more links and hints for identifying the precise legal entity with which you are trading. 

PPSR Registrations Against Sole Traders

While the PPSR allows you to describe your registration as being in respect of a security interest arising from either a Commercial or Consumer transaction, when it comes to registering that interest against an individual this differentiation appears to have no real effect.

Registrations against a sole trader entering into a security agreement on behalf of their business still have to be lodged against the individual as opposed to the business.

Any registrations against an individual must identify the individual by their full name (such as would appear on their drivers licence) and date of birth.  

The fact that the sole trader has a valid ABN (Australian Business Number) which featured prominently on their application for credit is neither here nor there and the PPSR provides no facility for entering this number as part of the registration.  

But what if the sole trader is acting as the trustee of a Trust?  The PPSA allows for the registration of security interests against Trusts using the Trust ABN - doesn't this allow a creditor to avoid having to use the sole trader's name and date of birth?

Unfortunately, the answer is far from clear.  

The Personal Property Securities Regulations 2010 provides the following definition for an individual:

individual:

                (a)    includes a sole trader who has an ABN for the enterprise for which the security interest is granted or held; and

               (b)    does not include an individual who is a partner in a partnership or a trustee of a trust if the partnership or trust has an ABN for the enterprise for which the security interest is granted or held.

Well, what's unclear about that? (b) seems to be saying quite clearly that if the sole trader is using a Trust ABN then they don't have to be treated as an individual for the purposes of registration.  

Agreed, but if we look further at the Regulations they go on to state that the prescribed details for lodging a registration against a trustee are:

               (a)    for a trustee that is an individual — the details mentioned in the item of the table in clause 1.2                        that:

                          (i)    applies to the trustee; and

                         (ii)    has the lowest item number;

The table in clause 1.2 referred to here takes us back to the instructions stating that the details needing to be provided are the full name and date of birth of the individual as found on their drivers licence!

Now, while I would suggest that the intention of the Act is probably to allow for sole traders who are acting as trustees for Trusts that have ABNs to have registrations lodged against the Trust (as an organisation) and be identified by that Trust's ABN, the relevant wording is so convoluted and unclear that, in the absence of legal precedent, a case could be made either way.

PPSA & Trusts

To say that the PPSA’s position regarding Trusts is confusing would be an understatement.

The most relevant guidance comes from Schedule 1 of the PPS Regulations (the text for which I’ve reproduced at the end of this article).

That guidance appears to be stating that where a company is a trustee of a Trust that has an ABN and “holds or has an interest in collateral” any new registration should be made by reference to the Trust’s ABN. 

Unfortunately, there is no guidance as to the situation where the company is a trustee of a Trust that has an ABN but that Trust does not hold or have an interest in the collateral forming the security interest.

If we also look at the manner in which the PPSR has designed its own Web Service for registering security interests (see screenshot below) we can see that where the Grantor is an organisation with an ACN the issue as to whether a Trust is involved simply does not arise.

Only when the Grantor is identified as an organisation without an ACN (ARBN or ARSN) does the user get presented with the option to identify the Grantor by its Trust ABN (see screenshot below).

Under basic contract law principles your contract of supply is made with a company with an ACN and your Retention of Title clause enables you, in the event of that company’s non-payment, to recover from that company goods you have supplied.  Your security interest should therefore, in my opinion, be registered against your contractual party, i.e., by the ACN of the company forming your contractual party.

However, there is no doubt that the waters are substantially muddied by the PPSA’s ill-conceived addition of Trusts as eligible Grantors and there may be some mileage in a belt and braces approach involving a second registration against the Trust ABN.

UPDATE

The PPSR has now changed its on-line form and made matters a bit clearer regarding when to lodge registrations against trusts.  Now, when identifying that your Grantor has an ACN the user is presented with the following:

Presumably, the user is being encouraged at this stage to change their mind and select 'No' to the ACN question and register using the Trust ABN.



Please note that this guidance should not be used in place of proper legal advice and, although my work gives me some experience and familiarity with the PPSA/PPSR, I am not a legal professional by any stretch of the imagination (I don't get paid nearly enough for that!).

Ps. As threatened above, the following is the ‘relevant’ text from the Personal Property Securities Regulations 2010:

1.5           Secured party or grantor is a trustee

     (1)       For items 1 and 2 of the table in subsection 153 (1) of the Act, this clause applies if the secured party or grantor is:

                (a)    a body corporate that is a trustee of a trust that:

                          (i)    has an ABN; and

                         (ii)    does not have an ARSN; or

               (b)    any other trustee of a trust.

     (2)       The details mentioned in each item of the table, from the source mentioned for the item, are prescribed for the trustee mentioned in the item.

     (3)       For subclause (2), the prescribed details are:

                (a)    for a trustee that is an individual — the details mentioned in the item of the table in clause 1.2 that:

                          (i)    applies to the trustee; and

                         (ii)    has the lowest item number; and

               (b)    in any other case — the details mentioned in the item of the table that:

                          (i)    applies to the trustee; and

                         (ii)    has the lowest item number.

     (4)       In this clause:

trustee details means:

                (a)    the ABN allocated to the enterprise carried on by the trust; or

               (b)    the ACN or ARBN allocated to the trustee; or

                (c)    the name of the trust or trustee.

     (5)       Item 1 of the table applies only to a registration by the Registrar under subsection 333 (2) of the Act.

Item	Trustee	Details	Source
1	Trustee of a trust for which details have been included on the transitional register, for a migrated security interest	Trustee details, as recorded on the transitional register	Transitional register
2	Trustee of a trust that holds or has an interest in collateral in the course of, or for, an enterprise that has been allocated an ABN	ABN	Australian Business Register
3	Trustee of any other trust	Trustee details mentioned in paragraph (3) (a)	Source mentioned in paragraph (3) (a)

(Note: the Paragraph (3)(a) referred to in the above table only concerns itself with situations where the Grantor is an individual)

All a bit of a mess

When the Personal Property Securities Act was passed in late 2009 it was intended that the  National Register it needed to create would be introduced in May 2011.  It therefore seems strange to suggest that its eventual introduction on 30th January 2012 (after an earlier extension to October 2011) showed all the hallmarks of a rushed affair.


Aside from all the little cosmetic issues with the Register (links not working, Help buttons that popped up with useful guidance such as "insert help text here") the Register simply did not work for much of its first week. 


I remember the fun we had in our office early in February calling out from our cubicles "Is the Register up yet?", "No",  "Hang-on, it's up now!", "Oh no, it's down again". Happy times.


It was only later we realised that it wasn't just us members of the public and business community that were having problems.  The intra-governmental transfer of registered charges from ASIC's database to the PPSR had also hit something of a snag.  It wasn't until mid-March that we discovered that some 38,000 satisfied charges wrongly appeared on the PPSR as current charges with an additional 6,000 charges not appearing at all!  A further 25,878 company charges with multiple secured parties did make it across to the new register but with many of them only showing a single secured party.


Even when details of a company charge have made it across to the new register in one piece we find that some identify the chargee or grantor by ACN, some by ABN and others by company name even though the PPSA rules require grantors with an ACN to be registered solely by that number.  This will virtually necessitate interested parties to conduct at least three searches (by ACN, ABN and Name) for every grantor they are curious about (each search will, of course, attract its own fee from the Register).


While it is easy to get distracted by the practical problems the Register is having in applying their registration rules we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that those rules laid down in the Act itself look pretty flawed in the first place!


If a grantor has an ACN then the security interest registered against it should identify the grantor by that ACN.  That is clear and understood.  


If the charge is against a partnership then that partnership should be identified by their ABN.  That is also clear and makes sense.  


If, however, the charge is against an organisation such as co-operative, a strata plan, sports association, charity, church group or any organisation incorporated under state law (rather than under the Corporations Act) that does not have an ACN but does have an ABN then one would think that the ABN should be used to identify that organisation.  Unfortunately, the answer is 'No'; in such cases the grantor needs to be identified by Name only.


I suppose there could be an argument suggesting that the organisation could use more than one ABN or that the ABN does not sufficiently 'define' the organisation in the same way as an ACN defines a company, but does that same argument not also apply to partnerships?


Last (for this blog entry) but not least,the PPSA also encourages registrations to be made against Trusts which, as most people in business probably know, do not have the legal capacity to enter into contracts nor, indeed, to grant security interests!  


So, to recap briefly, we have a mess of a Register administering rules laid down by a mess of an Act.  


In any other circumstance I'd recommend we all avert our gaze and ignore the whole embarrassing thing; unfortunately, mess or not, the PPSA is not going to go away and will have way too much impact on the manner in which business is conducted in this country for the foreseeable future for us not to pay it a great deal of attention.


In further blog posts I hope to be able to help clarify many of the twists and turns of the PPSA that may trip the unwary and try and make sense of what, in many ways, is all a bit of a mess.


P