The Personal Property Securities Act has failed to meet a number of its objectives and needs to be amended to reduce its complexity and cost, according to the lawyer who will head the government's review of the Act.Ashurst partner Bruce Whittaker told delegates at Veda PPSA forum in Sydney last week that two years after it took effect the PPSA regime still caused a great deal of uncertainty.The PPSA, which came into effect in January 2012, replaced state and territory laws with a national regime for the creation, registration and enforcement of security interests in personal property.The Act also created the Personal Property Securities Register, which consolidated more than 40 commonwealth, state and territory registers used to provide notification to third parties of interest in personal property.On Friday, Attorney-General George Brandis announced that Whittaker would lead a government review of the PPSA. An interim report is expected by the end of July.The PPSA was designed to simplify the process of creating and enforcing security interests, make the process more consistent, give greater certainty about those matters and reduce costs.It was also intended to increase the range of property available to secure finance.Whittaker said: "If we take the benchmarks that were set for the legislation when it was introduced, in terms of consistency it is huge step forward. We have one registry with one set of rules."In terms of certainty, most practitioners still have concerns. One reason for this is that there are some very detailed rules in the legislation that don't always reflect how things work in the marketplace."He said the system was very complex, with variations for different market sectors and different business activities. "Complexity and uncertainty mean that it is more costly. People come to us for advice and we can't always be clear," he said."Has it increased the range of assets available to secure finance? I can't say."The chief operating officer of the Australian Financial Security Authority, Gavin McCosker, said his concern was that the general level of understanding about PPSA and the operations of the PPSR in the business community was not at the "desired level". As a result, take-up of the system has not been uniform across business sectors.AFSA is the government body responsible for the administration of the insolvency system and the PPSR. McCosker said one of his priorities was to raise awareness.He said one benchmark indicated that the PPSR was working well. "We have three searches for every one registration. What this means is that the register is being used as a risk mitigation tool by credit managers, and that is an effective use of the system."According to Veda's 2013 National Credit Manager Survey, 33 per cent of credit managers reported that they registered security interests on the PPSR - up from 24 per cent in 2012."Things are moving in the right direction," said Veda's general manager of commercial and property solutions, Carol Chris.However, there is still plenty of progress to be made. Chris said that before the launch of the PPSR, about