Baselayer’s Lien Search product provides a fast, programmatic way to surface encumbrances, creditor claims, and financial red flags associated with any business.
Lien data is a critical part of KYB, credit underwriting and fraud prevention because active liens can indicate existing debt obligations, senior secured creditors, tax issues, or operational stress.

This guide details:

How to request and retrieve lien data
Best practices for which states to search
How to interpret lien structures (UCC1s, amendments, terminations)
How to filter out irrelevant or inactive filings
How to retrieve and use lien documents for underwriting
How to operationalize lien insights into automated decisioning

In addition to lien searches, Baselayer allows Enterprise Customers to file liens seamlessly and automatically, removing the operational lift traditionally involved in securing a loan.
For a full walkthrough, explore the Lien Filing guide or contact your Baselayer representative.

1. Introduction: Why Liens Matter

Liens represent legal claims against a business’s assets, filed by lenders, tax authorities, or other creditors. When evaluating a business’s financial profile, liens help answer:

Is the business already using collateral to secure debt?
Are there outstanding tax obligations?
Is the business taking on frequent or unusual secured borrowings?
Are other lenders already perfected before you?

Baselayer’s lien search system retrieves:

UCC filings
Federal tax liens
State tax liens
Where available: lien documents, PDFs, attachments

Baseline attributes include: status, filing type, filing date, lapse date, parties, and amendments.

These can be used in identity verification, credit decisioning, fraud screening, and manual review workflows.

Glossary

UCC1 (Initial Financing Statement)

A UCC1 filing creates a new secured credit relationship.
It represents a lender taking a security interest in some or all of a business’s assets.
Only UCC1 filings should be counted as new debt events.

UCC3 (Amendments, Continuations, Assignments, Terminations)

A UCC3 filing does not represent new debt.
It updates or maintains an existing UCC1 and may include:

Continuation (extends lien perfection)
Amendment (updates collateral or information)
Assignment (transfers the lien to another lender)
Termination (ends the lien)

These should not be counted as additional liens when assessing leverage.

Active Lien

A lien that is currently effective and enforceable according to the state’s registry.

Terminated / Released Lien

A lien that has been formally ended by the secured party (after filing a Termination UCC3).

Lapsed Lien

A lien that has expired because its effective period ended without a continuation filing.
The Lapse Date of a UCC filing is usually 5 or 7 years from the filing date.

Domestic State

The domestic state is the business’s state of incorporation or formation.
Under UCC rules, this is where UCC liens are perfected, and thus the most important state to search.

Foreign-qualified states rarely contain UCC filings unless collateral is physically located there.

Foreign State Registration

A registration of the business in a state other than its domestic state, often for operating or tax purposes.

Tax Liens

A lien filed by a government agency (federal, state, county, municipal, or IRS) for unpaid taxes.
These filings are commonly associated with a strong financial-distress signal.

Secured Party

The creditor or entity holding the security interest created by the lien filing.

Debtor

The business or individual whose assets are subject to the security interest.

Collateral

A textual description of the assets covered by the lien (e.g., all assets, equipment, inventory) included in the lien filing.

Senior Secured Lender

The senior secured lender is typically the earliest active UCC1 with a broad collateral description (often "all assets").
Identifying the senior lender helps determine priority and whether new financing would be subordinate, pari passu, or potentially unsecured.

2. How to Request a Lien Search

A liens search is a two-step process, identical across all clients.

Step 1: Initiate the Search

Use the business_id obtained from a Business Search.

Please read our existing guides about Business Search for additional details:

POST /lien_searches  
{  
  "business_id": "f7688172-2e5f-400b-9e3f-8d2f93eabd79",  
  "search_states": ["CA", "FL"]   // Optional  
}

If search_states is null, Baselayer automatically searches the domestic state of the business.
This is the recommended default for most customers.

Upon submission, Baselayer emits:

LiensSearch.submitted → search started
LiensSearch.completed → results ready

A standard request will take 5-10 seconds to complete.

State Selection: Domestic vs. All Registered States

Baselayer’s best practice is to search only for the domestic state. In that case, you don't need to submit the field search_states.

Why?

The domestic state is the state of incorporation or formation, also called the legal home state of the business.

UCC filings are usually perfected in the domestic state.
Under UCC rules, liens follow the debtor’s principal state of formation. Non-domestic states do not typically host any UCC filings.

Tax liens may appear in foreign states when the business owes or conducts taxable activity there, including sales tax, use tax, or employment-related taxes. These are usually small debts if they are not the main states of operation for the business.

Every state searched incurs a direct data cost.
Some customers mistakenly search all foreign-qualified states, creating unnecessary spend.

When customers should add other states

Add specific states only when:

You know collateral is tied to a physical location in another state
The product involves equipment financing, inventory collateral, or non-standard assets
The business is incorporated in State A but truly operates in State B
- In these cases we recommend running 2 states: incorporation state + state of the submitted address

Step 2: Retrieve the Results

The LiensSearch.Completed webhook will contain the complete information about the liens associated with the business.

You can also use the id of the liens search request to retrieve the information via API:

GET /lien_searches/{liens_search_request_id}

The results include the array of filings, which contains one object per lien filing found. Each object filings includes all the details about one specific lien filing.

Step 3: Retrieving Lien Documents

PDF documents are available for specific lien filings, depending on the state and the date of the filing. Where available, Baselayer puts the document at your disposal free of cost.

Not all states provide documents digitally, and some provide partial or limited history (especially pre-2010 filings).

If a filing includes a document (document_filename != null), you can use the following API route to retrieve the PDF using the id of a specific filing:

GET /lien_searches/{liens_search_request_id}/filings/{filing_id}

This returns a consolidated PDF of all associated documents for that unique filing.

3. Understanding the Returned Data

Each lien filing includes structured fields that enable downstream analysis.

Key fields to rely on:

id: unique identifier of the lien filing, helpful for document retrieval
state: US state where the lien was filed
filing_number: unique identifier in the state's registry
filing_type: UCC1, UCC3, State Tax Lien, etc.
filing_date: when the secured interest was officially filed
lapse_date: when the secured interest expires unless a continuation statement is filed (usually 5 years after filing_date)
status: active / inactive / terminated / lapsed
parties: list of parties associated with the filing, role can be "Debtor", "Secured Party" or "Record Owner"
amendments: chronological list of amendments to the filing

All filing metadata - including filing_type, filing_number, and status - comes directly from the state registry without normalization.

Best Practices for Interpretation

1. Focus on Active Filings

Active liens represent current encumbrances on a business’s assets and should be the primary focus when assessing financial risk. Terminated or lapsed liens can provide historical context - such as prior borrowing behavior or patterns of refinancing - but they do not indicate ongoing obligations.

When interpreting lien results, a lien should be considered currently effective only if both of the following are true:

status == "active", and

lapse_date is in the future (i.e., the lien has not expired)

Why this matters

Some states do not automatically update the status of a lien after its lapse date. As a result, a lien may still appear as "active" in the state registry even though it has legally expired. In these cases, the lapse_date is the authoritative indicator of whether the lien is still enforceable.

2. Identify High-Risk Filing Types

Tax Liens

Baselayer returns lien data exactly as it appears in each state’s Secretary of State (SoS) system. Because filing_type is not normalized across states, customers must classify government-originated liens (especially tax liens) using keyword logic.

Correctly identifying tax liens is critical because - even in lightweight underwriting flows - they represent a strong financial-distress signal and typically warrant at least a manual review, if not an automatic flag.

Below is Baselayer’s recommended method for reliably detecting state, federal, municipal, county, and IRS-originated tax liens.

Why Keyword Matching Is Necessary

To ensure full coverage, customers should rely on keyword-based rules rather than exact string matching.

A lien filing should be categorized as a tax or government lien if the filing_type contains any of the following terms (case-insensitive): internal revenue service / IRS / tax / municipal / state / federal / county / labor / warrant / warrants

Multiple UCCs within the last 18–24 months

Another strong indicator of potential financial stress is the presence of multiple UCC1 filings within a short time window. UCC1 filings represent new secured credit relationships; when several appear over 18-24 months, they often signal:

Increasing leverage
Cash-flow pressure requiring additional financing
Stacked or competing lenders
Refinancing cycles that may indicate instability

While not always negative - some industries regularly use secured lending - clusters of recent UCC1s should trigger closer review.

3+ UCC filings over the last 18-24 months, or a UCC1 filed in the last 90 days, when applying for a new loan, are common signs of heavy leverage or short-term cash needs.

3. Identify the Senior Secured Lender

Understanding who holds the primary secured interest in a business’s assets provides valuable signal, especially for lenders offering factoring, asset-backed loans, merchant cash advances (MCAs), or working capital products.

Key steps to identify the senior lender:

Look for the earliest active UCC1.
Review any continuations or amendments (UCC3s) associated with that filing to determine whether it remains perfected.
Prioritize filings from institutional lenders, banks, or large financing companies, as they are more likely to hold senior priority.

Most recent UCC1s may not be senior, especially if they secure specific assets (e.g., equipment-only liens). Understanding the collateral scope is essential.

Why this matters:

It signals whether your financing would be subordinate, pari passu, or improperly secured.
It helps assess whether the business may already be fully encumbered.

Knowing the senior lender also helps anticipate refinancing cycles, detect early credit stacking, and understand the borrower’s existing credit relationships.

4. Retrieving and Using Lien Documents

Baselayer provides PDFs for most states (subject to availability).

Use:

GET /lien_searches/{request_id}/filings/{filing_id}

A document review is usually necessary in certain scenarios:

When validating priority in ABL or factoring
When collateral descriptions are needed (e.g., "all assets," “inventory,” “accounts receivable,” etc.)
When statuses or amendments look suspicious

The filing PDFs are available free of cost via API or the console.

5. Recommended Risk Flags & Thresholds

Liens can be leveraged in very distinct ways depending on a customer’s product, risk appetite, and underwriting workflow.

Not all liens carry the same risk weight. Some filings reflect clear, high-risk signals, while others simply provide context about the business’s borrowing behavior. Baselayer recommends adjusting how you treat lien information differently depending on your lending model, ticket size, and operational constraints.

High-Risk Lien Cases

These are the lien patterns that reliably correlate with financial strain, stacking behavior, or unresolved obligations. They are the cases that should always surface to underwriting - regardless of ticket size or automation strategy.

High-Risk Rules

A business should be flagged as high-risk if it meets any of the following:

Any active tax lien
Identified by filing_type as we have explained in section 3.
A new UCC1 filing within the last 90 days
Potential signs of credit stacking, refinancing, or urgent cash needs.
3+ active UCC filings within the last 18 months
Strong indication of heavy leverage, frequent refinancing, or ongoing cash-flow pressure.

These cases should always be surfaced to an underwriter, because the risk signal is strong and consistent.

Contextual Lien Cases

Most businesses will have zero, one, or several liens that do not necessarily indicate distress. These should not automatically drive a review unless other risk signals are present.

Examples of contextual cases:

Terminated or lapsed liens
UCC filings older than ~18–24 months with no recent amendments
Single active UCC1 without other risk flags
Equipment-specific or industry-standard secured financing
Long-standing “all assets” liens that have been continued for years

These filings can still be relevant to underwriting, but should not trigger interventions on their own for most lending programs.

Baselayer’s Recommendation Based on Ticket Size

If you’re lending small-ticket, short-duration or high-velocity products:

Most customers want to incorporate lien signals without overwhelming their credit team.

Recommended approach:

Only high-risk cases should trigger manual review.
All other lien information should be included as a non-blocking flag (e.g., “Liens Present”), but not routed to review by default.
If a case is already being reviewed for other reasons, include the lien context for the underwriter.

This keeps your workflow efficient while still capturing meaningful risk.

If you’re lending large-tickets or long-duration products:

Large-ticket underwriting already involves document review and financial analysis.
In these cases, liens should always form part of the underwriter’s information set.

Recommended approach:

Always include all lien information in the underwriting file.
Highlight high-risk lien cases explicitly, as these are the filings that warrant deeper scrutiny (e.g., looking at collateral descriptions or secured party seniority).
Other liens should be treated as standard background context for the underwriter.

This ensures complete visibility while maintaining clarity around which cases require special attention.

6. Putting It All Together

Baselayer’s lien data helps paint a deeper picture of a business’s financial obligations, leverage, and recent borrowing behavior. Used correctly, it can significantly strengthen both automated decisioning and manual underwriting without creating unnecessary operational burden.

To make the most of the product:

Start with the essentials: identify active filings, classify tax liens using keyword rules, and surface recent or clustered UCC1 filings that may signal elevated risk.
Separate high-risk cases from contextual lien activity: only the strongest signals (tax liens, recent UCC1s, and multiple new filings) should consistently influence decisioning. All other liens serve primarily as background context.
Adapt the workflow to your lending model:
- Small-ticket lenders should only flag high-risk cases to avoid overwhelming underwriters.
- Large-ticket lenders should always include lien data in the underwriting package while clearly highlighting high-risk items for deeper review.
Use documents when needed: when collateral, lender priority, or amendments matter, retrieve lien PDFs directly through Baselayer to provide underwriters with a complete picture.

Taken together, these practices ensure you maintain strong risk controls, keep workflows efficient, and give your underwriting team the right information at the right time - without overreacting to common lien activity or introducing unnecessary friction into your credit process.