About the Morocco National Electronic Collateral Registry
This website is where you find Morocco’s National Electronic Collateral Registry. It is where you will register notices of security interest (pledge) in movable property (collateral) and to search for notices of other existing pledges. If you have agreed to take a pledge, in the movable property of someone (the grantor), to secure their obligation to you (usually an obligation to repay money), you may register a notice to inform others of your security interest. In order to check for a prior security interest in collateral that is offered to you as security for an obligation, you may search the Registry's records through this website.
In a typical situation under the Act, a going business or an entrepreneur (the grantor) contacts a lender (secured party) to apply for a loan for the business. The grantor may offer the secured party a security charge over the business' equipment, its inventory, accounts receivable or other assets. The lender would first search the records of the National Electronic Collateral Registry to see whether the assets being offered as collateral are subject to a prior pledge. For companies, the search will be made using the company tax identification number. If the grantor is an individual Moroccan National, the search uses their National ID Number. If there is no prior notice of pledge against the proposed collateral, the secured party can then enter the loan agreement with the grantor with the confidence of its priority in the collateral against other lenders. The secured party would want to register its own notice of pledge over the collateral prior to disbursing the loan proceeds. Filing this notice in the NECR registrar gives the filer priority position in the collateral in the event the grantor defaults.
If the potential lender finds in its search that a notice of pledge in the proposed collateral has already been registered by another person, it has several options. The potential lender may contact the prior secured party to determine if the existing obligation is small enough that there is sufficient excess value in the collateral to secure the proposed loan, and then register its own notice of pledge (in this case, the second-to-file would have secondary priority in the collateral). Conversely, the potential lender may try to obtain an agreement with the prior secured party to subordinate (make second) the prior interest to the current secured party's interest, and then register a notice. Or the secured party may simply decide not to lend based upon the presence of the prior notice because the credit risk of the prior interest is too great.
The reason for registering a notice of a pledge is to establish a creditor's priority rights in a grantor's collateral. The first creditor to register a notice will almost always have priority in the collateral over all other creditors should the grantor (borrower) default. Because of this, if a prior pledge is registered, then a current prospective creditor (or buyer) may not obtain priority (or clean title) in the movable property being pledged a collateral (or sold) and may wish to reconsider their business transaction. Therefore, the reason for searching the National Electronic Collateral Registry records is to discover whether there may be a pre-existing security interest in the property of a grantor.
The Ministry of Justice has been designated as the Registrar for the National Electronic Collateral Registry. However, almost all business with the Registry is conducted on-line through this website, meaning there is rarely any need to visit in person. The Registrar is responsible for administering the website and collecting applicable filing fees, but filers are responsible for entering the information required to make a legally proper filing in the online registry. The Registrar does not review any filings. Therefore, it is up to the filer to provide the relevant information.
If you have questions or need help with navigating the website, you may contact the Tech Support Desk by clicking the Technical Support link. The Tech Support Desk will review your query and respond within a short time.
