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Gessler licenses secured lien filing software
Revenue will help keep fees among lowest in the nation
Denver, Colorado, May 19, 2014 - Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler today announced an agreement to license the office’s secured lien filing system software. The award-winning Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) filing system is the first-of-its-kind in the nation with all electronic filing of secured liens.
"Our secured lien filing system was the first of its kind in the nation with all online filing," Secretary Gessler said. "We worked aggressively to put more services online to increase convenience for our customers, and lower their costs. Now we’re taking the next innovative step by licensing the use of the software to bring in revenue for our office. This added revenue will help ensure we can keep our fees among the lowest in the nation while delivering top-notch customer service."
Through a public-private partnership, Foster Moore International Ltd. will have an exclusive license arrangement to market and license the software for use by other states, who will now have access to Colorado’s innovative technology. In return, the Secretary of State’s office will immediately receive $500,000 and $100,000 each year after that for five years.
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.
Previously, secured liens were filed by paper and 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 time-consuming search of physical records.
The system received a Merit Award from the International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA) in 2013.
