Notaries will have to offer online service by 2023

Brazilian registries will need to create a unified platform to offer digital services to the population by January 31, 2023, the deadline for implementing the so-called SERP (Public Records Electronic System).

The determination is contained in a provisional measure edited this Tuesday (28) by President Jair Bolsonaro. The text is effective immediately, but needs to be validated by the National Congress within 120 days from the beginning of the legislative year.

According to the Ministry of Economy, the measure can facilitate the registration of real estate, as well as birth or marriage certificates, among other acts that today depend on face-to-face assistance.

The consultation of information will also be simpler, since there are more than 13 thousand notary offices in the country, according to Anoreg (Association of Notaries and Registrars of Brazil).

Currently, a worker who buys a property needs to go to the notary office to draw up a deed and then go to the property registry office to make the document official. If the property is financed, the route must be repeated when the debt is paid.

With the new system, citizens will be able to do everything without leaving home, according to the government. Access will be allowed through electronic signatures or through registrations already made on the gov.br platform.

The SERP will also allow parents of a newborn to register the child directly from the hospital or their home, without the need to go to the civil registry office.

The queries should be simplified. In the current model, to check the status of a property, it is necessary to know which registry office it is registered with.

With the new system, it will be enough to hold information such as the registration number, or the owner’s CPF.

The secretary of Economic Policy at the Ministry of Economy, Adolfo Sachsida, pointed out that more than half of the notary offices today do not even have a page on the Internet, which makes service to the population difficult.

For him, the measure will also strengthen the system of guarantees and contribute to cheaper credit, since the data will be accessible in a simpler and more transparent way.

It will be possible to easily check, for example, if there is already any debt associated with the asset that a citizen intends to pledge in a credit operation – which gives access to lower interest rates.

Today, the financial institution now needs to know where the asset was registered in order to ascertain this information.

In the case of movable property, such as vehicles, equipment and machinery, legal certainty is lower, as there may be registrations in different locations. Therefore, according to the government, this type of guarantee is less accepted by institutions.

The expectation is that, with the possibility of consulting data with a national scope, the problem will be solved.

“We are strengthening the guarantee system. Fixing this problem [das garantias móveis], we have improved the credit channel,” stated the secretary.

“The measure increases legal certainty, transparency, agility, reduces bureaucracy and the costs of the notary process in Brazil,” said Sachsida.

Although the MP sets the maximum deadline for implementing the electronic system, the work schedule and details of each stage will still be regulated by the CNJ (National Council of Justice).

Notaries that do not want to join the SERP will need to adopt their own infrastructure that communicates with the system and, consequently, with the other registries. Interconnection will be mandatory.

The creation of the platform must be supported by the registries themselves. The MP creates the so-called FICS (Fund for the Implementation and Costing of the Public Records Electronic System), and each official letter will collect a quota to pay for the service.

“These are private resources, not through the Budget [público]. It will be funded by the registrars themselves,” explained the SPE’s Undersecretary for Microeconomic Policy, Emmanuel Sousa de Abreu.

“Since they will have a gigantic reduction in administrative costs, the need for physical space, personnel and administrative material, this will compensate for the creation of this fund,” he stated.

The records that currently exist in physical media must also be digitally scanned, according to the government. For this stage, however, no deadline was stipulated.

For the contracting of digital services, the MP foresees the possibility for citizens to use electronic means of payment, such as Pix, but this will still depend on CNJ regulation.

For Sachsida, the deadline of just over a year for the implementation of the SERP is feasible.

According to him, the measure was the subject of debate in the last two years between members of the Economy, the Central Bank, the General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, the Ministry of Justice, the CNJ and representatives of notary offices and companies.

The determination for notary offices to carry out their acts electronically already existed in law, but, due to the absence of detailed criteria and regulations, it was not applied, according to the government.