Gessler's business division wins merit award

Innovative filing and search system saving time and money

Denver, May 13, 2013 - The International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA) awarded the Colorado Secretary of State's office with a Merit Award for its Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filing and search system. The award was handed out today at the association's annual conference in Boston. The filing system is the first-of-its-kind in the nation with all electronic filing of secured liens.

"This new system saves our customers time and money, and we built it while keeping our fees among the lowest in the nation," Secretary Gessler said. "Colorado businesses expect modern, efficient filing systems, so we’ve built the best system in the country for searching and filing secured liens."

Customers will save an estimated $240,000 a year in reduced filing fees, since the online filing fee is lower than the paper filing fee. The new system will also free up 800 hours of office staff time annually that will be reallocated from processing paper to customer support, project development, and other tasks.

Paper submissions required more time and resources to process for both customers and staff. In addition, free search reports, copies of documents, and certified records are available online, on-demand, at any time of day. Previously, these records required a customer to submit a form and wait for staff to perform a physical search of records.

Secured liens- often referred to by their enabling statute, the Uniform Commercial Code- are liens filed when financial institutions take an interest against collateral in order to fund a loan. For example, farm equipment is often used as collateral by farmers when obtaining commercial loans. The financial institution granting the loan then files a lien against the equipment until the loan is repaid. Lenders use the filing database to find out if other liens have been filed on loan collateral.

The International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA) is a professional association for government administrators of business organizations and secured transaction record systems at the state, provincial, territorial, and national level in any jurisdiction that has or anticipates development of such systems.

For more information about IACA and the IACA Merit Awards, please visit www.IACA.org.