Finance brokers can add significant value for their business clients by developing a good working knowledge of the Personal Property Securities Register.A special counsel at the law firm Hall & Wilcox, Katherine Payne, said PPSR was part of the discussion brokers should be having with their commercial clients.Payne said: "PPSR is a system for creditors to register their security interests. It has been in place for more than a year but few business owners know much about it."That lack of knowledge is causing detriment. Brokers should be in a position to assist."The PPSR was designed to create a single national register of property (excluding land) with security interests More than 20 state and territory registers have migrated their records to the PPSR. They include the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's Register of Company Charges, state registers of encumbered vehicles, state bill-of-sale registers and state crop and livestock mortgage registers. Speaking at last week's Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia national congress, Payne said it was standard practice for lenders considering an application for credit to search the PPSR to see what security interests were already registered for the company.Payne said: "Lenders have got their PPSR systems running well and they are starting to do more with them. For example, they might check a business customer's PPSR compliance."If it finds that a customer is not registering its own security interests, it might not offer credit or it might charge more for the credit."A common situation is where a company sells goods on the basis that the title does not pass to the buyer until payment is completed. Under the old law, the vendor retained title until payment was completed, but under the Personal Property Securities Act the vendor must register its security interest with the PPSR. If the security interest is not registered and the buyer becomes insolvent the vendor would not have title, and the goods would pass into the hands of the receiver or liquidator.Payne said: "We had a client that was a supplier to Allens Music. The client lost its unsold goods when Allens went broke because it had not registered its security interest."It should be standard practice for suppliers to register all their customers. This is something brokers can help them with."Payne said another service brokers can provide is financial hygiene. "The broker can do a search on behalf of its client to look for any registrations that should not be there. An old supplier might still have a security interest registered. "A lender might have recorded its interest over the whole business when it should have registered an interest in a single asset."By getting these registrations removed or amended the broker may end up assisting its client with its future financing needs."