Legal Challenges of Electronic Land Certificates as Credit Collateral: Aligning Land Digitalization and Consumer Protection in Indonesia

Abstract

The research is focussed on the influence of digitalization on land matters in relation to consumer protection in banking credit services. It focuses on the use of an electronic land certificate as collateral for credit. Employing the normative juridical method with a Human Rights-Based Approach, this paper has investigated to what extent the digitalization of land policies and banking regulations are aligned in order to protect citizens' rights in an economic sense. The outcome shows that land digitalization improves administrative efficiency in accelerating processes related to credit and also increases transparency in public administration. Registration and execution of mortgage rights may be executed online nowadays, reducing the average time of processing from seven to three days and cutting document forgery by more than 60%. However, issues yet to be overcome include contradictory regulations between Mortgage Law and Government Regulation No. 18/2021, a gap between institutional and community digital literacy, and uncertainty over the protection of personal data relating to debtors. In addressing these challenges, the study suggests harmonization of regulations across the land administration, banking, and personal data protection sectors, strengthening the digital competency of human resources in land and banking institutions, implementing standards of national cybersecurity, and establishing a digital ombudsman to ensure timely and fair dispute resolution. These measures need to be taken so that digitalization of land affairs can genuinely underpin legal certainty, consumer protection and legal certainty in the era of Indonesia's digital economy.