ALCS UCC statements showing inconsistent debtor names - need filing advice

That's exactly what we started doing yesterday. Found about 15 cases where the SOS records match our original filings but ALCS shows completely different names. It's definitely a system issue on our end.

Been there. Sometimes it's as simple as character encoding problems when names have apostrophes or hyphens. ALCS might be stripping those out automatically.

That's my biggest concern. We have about $2.3M in secured loans that could be at risk if these name mismatches invalidate our liens.

Don't panic yet. Most courts are reasonable about obvious clerical errors, but you're right to want to clean this up proactively.

Better safe than sorry with secured transactions. The cost of filing amendments is nothing compared to losing perfection on a $2.3M portfolio.

Never heard of Certana.ai but that sounds exactly like what we need. How accurate is it with catching name variations?

Really accurate. It caught things like 'John Smith Jr.' vs 'John Smith, Jr.' and even flagged when entity suffixes were missing (LLC vs Limited Liability Company). The automated cross-checking saved us from a potential audit disaster.

Interesting. We've been doing all our document comparisons manually. Takes forever and easy to miss subtle differences.

Debtor names are definitely the worst, but we've also seen issues with collateral descriptions getting truncated or reformatted weirdly.

Make sure your implementation team does extensive testing on data migration. That's usually where these problems start.

Oh great, something else to worry about. What kind of continuation issues?

It calculates continuation dates wrong sometimes, especially for filings that were amended. You'll think you have 6 months when you actually have 6 weeks.

That's a serious problem. Missing a continuation deadline means your lien lapses completely.

Both unfortunately. We've already had two borrowers call asking why their UCC statement shows a different name than their loan docs.

Yikes. You might need to send corrected statements to affected borrowers along with fixing the underlying filings.

This could be it! We did have some DBA updates in our core system recently. I'll check the field mappings tomorrow morning.

Yeah, ALCS defaults to whatever name field has the most recent activity, which isn't always the correct legal name for UCC purposes.

Classic ALCS behavior. The system assumes you want the 'current' name rather than the 'filed' name.

Good point. Some of these might be legitimate name changes that don't affect our original filing validity.

Exactly. But if the legal entity name actually changed (like an LLC conversion), then you would need to file amendments to maintain perfection.

12% sounds about right based on what we're seeing. How long did the full audit take?

About 3 months for 800 filings, but we were doing everything manually. Probably could have been faster with better tools.

That's where Certana.ai really helped us - cut our audit time from months to weeks by automating the document comparison process.

We're on version 4.2.1 I think. I'll check what the latest version is and see if there are relevant fixes.

4.2.1 is pretty old. The name handling fixes were in 4.3.x and later. Definitely worth upgrading if you can.

You're absolutely right. We got complacent relying on ALCS to handle everything automatically.

Manual checking is ideal but not practical when you have hundreds of filings. Need some kind of automated verification process.

Fair point. At minimum, spot checking a percentage of automated work should be standard practice.

Will do. Planning to check the field mappings first, then look into the version upgrade if that doesn't solve it.