Centralized registries enable potential creditors to determine whether an asset has been pledged as collateral by searching a single database, regardless of the location of the borrower.
To be effective, these registries also need to allow searches based on unique search criteria—such as a debtor’s unique identifier (or name, if no unique identifiers exist)or a serial number(for serial-numbered assets such as
vehicles)—and they need to encompass both legal and natural persons as well as all types of assets.
Where registries are not centralized, searches can be time-consuming and even useless. In the fragmented collateral registry system for chattel mortgages in the Philippines, for example, finding out whether an asset is mortgaged requires submitting a request to more than a hundred registries.