New Polish Register of Debtors: Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych
Published 1.12.2021, the Polish National Debt Register (Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych KRZ) is a new public register with a list of debtors. It is supposed to replace the Register of Insolvent Debtors (Rejestr Dłużników Niewypłacalnych RDN). Is this new datasource about insolvencies in Poland going to be better than the old one? Let’s check out how it looks inside.
The Polish National Debt Register (Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych) — basic information
The Polish National Register of Debtors (pl. Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych, in short Portal KRZ) is an online database, which is kept by the Minister of Justice of Poland. It has appeared publicly on December 1, 2021. The portal is available only in Polish. You will find it at:
Polish National Register of Debtors KRZ (official website at ms.gov.pl)
This list of Polish debtors is to contain information on economic entities against which enforcement, restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings are pending, as well as those that are insolvent or threatened with insolvency. The Polish National Register of Debtors, however, is not only to help find debtors, but also to browse through court notices regarding bankruptcy and restructuring that are now being published via Court and Economic Monitor Gazette (MSiG) and also to ease the whole procedure of adding a debtor.
Poles waited a bit for this portal. The Act on Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych was passed in 2018 and was to enter into force on December 1, 2020 but this deadline was postponed by a whole year. In the meantime, the same Act was amended to conform to the new regulations on bankruptcy law in Poland.
The new Polish debtors’ register is a little bit disappointing for now, because it is almost empty. In practice, data on debtors will be available in this database only when the first entity submits an electronic application for its case via the Polish Court Records Portal portal (in polish: Portal Rejestrów Sądowych) — another quite new governmental website. So… hmm, it’s hard to say when it will actually happen.
In the new Polish register of debtors you can’t find information about debtors and case files from before November 30, 2021. The portal users are informed about that in the announcement immediately after entering the new register’s website. If you want to find out something about the bankruptcy proceedings of a given Polish company from the beginning of 2021 or earlier, you still have to look into Polish Register of Insolvent Debtors (Rejestr Dłużników Niewypłacalnych — RDN), which is an old database, or use the services of private debt exchanges.
As of today, the only data available in Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych is the list of almost 1,600 restructuring advisors that are active in Poland. It includes both people who do have and don’t have the title of a qualified restructuring advisor.
New Polish National Register of Debtors (KRZ) vs Polish Register of Insolvent Debtors (RDN)
As we mentioned above, the Polish National Debt Register (KRZ) is officially to replace the still active Polish Register of Insolvent Debtors (RDN website). It is a pity that there are about a million entries about debtors in the RDN, and exactly 0 in the KRZ. It is also saddening that the new database does not combine the previous data — which means that in practice many creditors and lawyers will still have to verify advertisements in two separate registers, the old and the new one.
The Ministry of Justice in Poland announced that the new list of indebted people would be significantly different from the Polish Register of Insolvent Debtors — be its modern version, more user-friendly. Has this assumption been achieved? In our opinion, not entirely.
The appearance and functionality of the polish KRZ portal versus the “old” RDN
The Polish National Debt Register (KRZ) is definitely gaining in appearance. It has more modern fonts, clear navigation in the sidebar and looks generally much more aesthetic.
Pros of the new Polish National Register of Debtors (KRZ):
- Possibility to search for a Polish entity by using the company’s registration number (KRS number); in the RDN it was necessary to enter the RDN number, which was quite troublesome and took more time;
- Another benefit is certainly the fact that the new Polish National Register of Debtors also allows users to search people by their PESEL number (Polish acronym for Universal Electronic System for Registration of the Population);
The portal is generally more extensive. It has as many as 5 sections:
- searching for entities and viewing proceedings;
- searching for partners in partnerships;
- searching for components of the bankruptcy estate (and here the search criteria are arranged very nicely);
- a board with court announcements;
- searching for restructuring advisors;
Cons of the new Polish National Register of Debtors (KRZ):
- The announcement board does not seem to be well thought out. At first glance, it is a search engine, not a board. You must first guess that the real board will appear when you click the last option on the menu — “WSZYSCY” button. This is incredibly non-functional and unfriendly to the user, because it’s actually quite hard to come up with. In the future, it should completely replace Court and Economic Monitor Gazette MSiG as a source of announcements about proceedings so the Polish Ministry of Justice should refine it a bit. In the first tab of the KRZ the user should see all the results — the actual board of court announcements, and then in the following sections, other search functionalities. Not the opposite.
- Another con also applies to the announcement board. More precisely, there is information that you can check information up to 2 years back, which is not true. Let us remind you that at the moment, the Polish National Register of Debtors provides only data on procedures submitted electronically after November 30, 2021. This means that this information will be valid only in 2023.
- The last and biggest con of the new Polish debt register is that it is empty, so it won’t be useful to any user at the moment.
Why was the Polish National Register of Debtors established?
New Polish National Register of Debtors, Krajowy Rejestr Zadłużonych, was created mainly to eliminate paper applications concerning bankruptcy or company restructuring in the courts in Poland. The debtors register allows users to deal with it without leaving their home through their computers. This means that it enables fully automated proceedings.
An entity in Poland that wants to submit an application or any pleading as the subject of restructuring or bankruptcy proceedings must visit the PRS portal (in Polish: Portal Rejestrów Sądowych) or simply click the LOG IN button in the upper right corner of the KRZ register.
Time will show whether this solution will actually speed up the procedure, or whether it will be in the other way.
The Polish National Register of Debtors was also created to be the better source of public information that MSiG is. Polish Court and Economic Monitor Gazette is available only in pdf format and it’s really hard to search for specific information there.
Summary
According to the report of the KRD BIG SA Economic Information Bureau, debtors’ claims in Poland exceed PLN 59 billion. Over PLN 47 billion are consumer debts, PLN 11.6 billion are companies’ debts. These large numbers prove that Poland needs a register of debtors with reliable and up-to-date data. Information about debtors can help in recovering receivables, verifying the credibility of individuals and companies, securing transactions and contracts, and has legal and procedural application in criminal and civil proceedings.
The potential beneficiaries of the debt base in Poland include not only ordinary citizens, but also enterprises, employees of administration offices and bankruptcy departments in courts, bailiffs, ZUS (Polish Social Insurance Institution), KAS (Polish National Revenue Administration), and even social assistance. But at the moment, the new Polish register of debtors, unfortunately, will not meet the expectations of neither consumers nor business. Perhaps this will change if the Polish Ministry works on the register and entities in Poland actually start using the possibility of electronic settlement of matters offered in the KRZ register.
At the moment, no API has been issued to the Polish National Register of Debtors that would allow companies to download data from KRZ. Work on the API has been planned for implementation in the so-called development phase of the list of indebted people in Poland, which began after the registry was officially put into service, on December 1, 2021. We look forward to adding this source to the data offered by Transparent Data.
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