This section covers how redaction of certain information may affect the Registers of Moveable Transactions and details those situations where redaction is required might be considered appropriate.
As both the Register of Assignations (RoA) and Register of Statutory Pledges (RSP) are public registers, generally speaking, all information contained in entries in the Assignation Record and Statutory Pledges Record will be available to someone searching either register or requesting an extract of a record entry from either. Without the ability for users to search and view the contents of the registers, they would not be able to function as intended.
Publicity of certain personal information is therefore an essential feature of the Registers of Moveable Transactions.
One key exception, however, is full dates of birth for certain individuals appearing in those registers.
Sections 29(1)(b) and 83(1)(b) of the Moveable Transactions (Scotland) Act 2023 provide that, for assignors and providers, respectively, who are individuals, the relevant record entry must contain their date of birth.
Rule 10(1)(b) of The Moveable Transactions (Register of Assignations and Register of Statutory Pledges Rules) (Scotland) Regulations 2024 (“the 2024 Rules”) in tandem with Rule10(6) for the RoA, and Rule 25(1)(b) in tandem with Rule 25(6) for the RSP, confirm that an applicant must provide, for assignors and providers who are individuals, a full date of birth – day, month and year.
However, although both registers will be searchable by month and year of birth of an individual assignor or provider (but only in tandem with their name), the full date of birth, although appearing in the record entry, will not appear in the results of any search of the RoA or RSP. Only the month and year will appear. The same applies to any extract issued by the Keeper.
This redaction by the Keeper is a privacy protection and fraud prevention measure to prevent searching being used to establish full dates of birth of individuals named on either register.
If, however, a full date of birth of a named individual appears in either an assignation document, statutory pledge constitutive document or statutory pledge amendment document submitted with an application for registration, this will be available to anyone searching the register or requestion an extract of a record entry therefrom.
The 2024 Rules (Rules 19 and 24), however, provide for parties to be free to redact certain personal information from copy documents submitted for registration, namely full dates of birth, signatures and the number or other identifier of any bank or securities account, prior to submission.
This provision allows for the privacy of parties engaging with the registers to be protected and also acts as an anti-fraud measure.
Such redaction will not affect the validity of the registration of any document so previously redacted.
Applicants should therefore take care to redact personal information, as considered appropriate, from a copy document to be submitted along with an application for registration in the RoA or RSP, prior to submission.
It follows that, provided applicants are careful not to provide personal information in documents submitted for registration in the RoA or RSP, then it will not be unnecessarily disclosed by the Keeper.
For clarification, if such personal information is not redacted prior to submission then the full un-redacted document would be available to someone searching either register or requesting a plain copy/extract of a record entry from either register.