Understand how the unified online registry will work

​Brazilians must have an alternative to physical notaries until January 31, 2023, the deadline for the implementation of a platform that will unify various bureaucratic services.

It will be the Serp (Electronic Public Records System), a tool provided for in a 2009 law and regulated by a provisional measure of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL). The text, which is ready for sanction by the chief executive, intends to modernize tasks such as real estate registration and recognition of signatures.

Digitization is already a reality in 95% of services, according to a note released by Anoreg (Association of Notaries and Registrars) this Tuesday (31). The centralization of orders will be Serp’s main novelty.

Understand what the text says and how it will be applied.

How will the system work?

Through Serp, it will be possible to register properties remotely, consult personal records data and register powers of attorney.

Although most of these services are already offered over the internet, the user will be able to access them all in one place. There will be a national central of records of titles and public documents, responsible for the storage of the data.

But, even on the internet, the notary responsible for the service will still be linked to the user’s location. That is, the fee for the service will be paid to the competent unit.

The system will be funded by a contribution fund supported by the 13,000 notary offices that exist today in Brazil. The long-term expectation is to digitize as many services as possible, and for the physical registry office to remain a place of guidance for the population.

Which services will change?

Many services will change, and some of the main changes concern the standardization of property records, marriage digitization and electronic signature.

Today, each bank has several types of documents to register properties, explains Flaviano Galhardo, director of the Brazilian Property Registry. With the sanction of the text, financial entities will continue with their own clauses, but, through Serp, it will be possible to standardize the forwarding of requests with files in a single format: XML.

Still regarding real estate, the text provides for the guarantee center. It is a search tool: if a person pledges a piece of jewelry, for example, to finance a house, this data will be in the system. In a future deal, a potential creditor will be able to know which assets of that person are already committed. That is, the duplication of the same good in different businesses is avoided.

Another change concerns signatures, which are currently only accepted with digital certificates. This certificate has a cost that made the digital world unfeasible, according to Galhardo. Digitization will now allow advanced electronic signatures – offered free of charge by gov.br.

“There is no longer that business of hiring a motorcyclist to carry out the process. You can enter the platform yourself and forward your contract”, he explains.

Marriage also undergoes major changes. The platform will make it faster — the time between the entry of the papers and the qualification drops from 15 to 5 days and the celebrations can be by videoconference. The conversion from stable union to marriage was also faster.

Before, there were concerns about the validity of that act. “Every registration act has an identity demand”, says Gustavo Renato Fiscarelli. He is president of Arpen-Brasil, an entity that brings together the Civil Registry Offices. They wondered, for example, whether videoconferencing marriages would not allow for false identities and coercion. “With the pandemic, the concept has changed.”

Will prices increase?

Sought after, Idec (Brazilian Institute for Consumer Protection) and Procon (Foundation for Consumer Protection and Defense) did not comment on possible changes in prices, which are set by the states.

The trend, however, is that digitization will reduce the work of intermediaries. Instead of asking forwarding agents, for example, the user himself can register a property or request a certificate. According to the entities, it is possible that the total price of the service will fall.

Objectively, the text also exempts the registration of properties of small producers who obtained their land in areas of settlement from Incra (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform).

How was the text processing?

The text is an interim measure. The instrument allows the president to create laws in situations of “relevance and urgency” and send them to Congress, where they need to be evaluated before they expire.

The MP was edited by Bolsonaro in December 2021 and approved by the Chamber of Deputies in early May, when it went to the Senate.

This Tuesday (31), the senators evaluated the 344 amendments of parliamentarians that suggested changes in the text of the Executive.

There are five types of notary. Titles and Documents, Civil Registry and Property Registry were included in the MP. Notary and Protest Notaries were left out of the new system, but they already have their own platforms, e-notary and Cenprot.

“The law came for the person to resort to a single environment”, says Claudio Marçal Freire, president of Anoreg. “All specialties are being modernized.”