Central Archiving for Bankruptcy Files

Description

In the Canton of Zurich, all notary offices also serve as bankruptcy offices and land registry offices. Zurich bankruptcy offices are required to retain not only their own files from bankruptcy proceedings but also the business records of the bankrupt companies themselves. The statutory retention period is generally 10 years (extending to 30 years for certain specific documents). To handle the ten-year retention of business records in particular, the notary offices currently operate nine "central archives." These nine central archives are located at seven sites, with each archive affiliated with a local bankruptcy/notary office. Archive management (inventory tracking, as well as the logging of incoming and outgoing files) is handled by staff from the local notary office. An IT application provides a comprehensive overview of capacity utilization across the individual archives. The rising number of bankruptcies in the Canton of Zurich has led to an increase in the volume of bankruptcy files and business records, causing the notary offices' existing central archives to reach—or in some cases already exceed—their capacity limits. For this reason, and in view of the need to avoid placing an additional burden on the canton’s insolvency offices with regard to storage services, the management of the Notarial Inspectorate has decided to outsource the storage of insolvency files as a sustainable, scalable solution.