asset register
The Finance & Leasing Association (FLA) has taken the first
steps in trying to sponsor a national register of leased
assets.
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This could alert any lessor to attempts at multiple financing
fraud when a dealer, customer or broker invoices for equipment
which another finance company already owns.
In the case of road vehicles, the statutory licence plate
system long ago allowed HPI to develop a working register of
vehicles on finance.
This is widely used by second hand buyers as well as by finance
companies, and therefore safeguards against both thefts and
multiple financing frauds. No such system has yet been developed
outside motor vehicles, and it is much the same story throughout
Europe.
Within the FLA there is some commitment to getting an asset
register up and running as soon as possible. Some experts
nevertheless feel that a substantial leadin period will be
unavoidable given the scale of the task.
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By GlobalDataAt this stage three potential providers of the register have
been invited to do preparatory work with a view to tendering. These
are HPI, the Experian credit reference agency, and Asset Lifecycle
Management (ALM), the residual value analysis specialist.
“A comprehensive asset register could prevent fraudulent
deals such as we have seen recently with the collapse of EPP
Global,” said Julian Rose, head of asset finance at the FLA.
ALM director, John Evans, said: “The register will need to
integrate vast ranges of data from other sources, particularly the
different serial number systems adopted by the manufacturers for
each asset type. Most leased assets have serial numbers, though
some, like certain types of production line plant, do not.
“Even for those, a register could cover all assets going on
lease by building up its own unique asset codes, but the whole
system would be critically dependent on ensuring that machinery
types are fully and accurately described by those entering
data.”
Lessors cited potential concerns that individual lessors could
abuse an asset register by interrogating it for marketing purposes
and fishing for data on their competitors’ market positions.
“That problem can be solved by the register provider policing
the system preventively, armed with the ultimate sanction of
suspending abusive users,” said Evans.
