The Finance Commission of Texas votes Oct. 16 on rules that would require the state’s payday and auto title lenders to write down how they protect customer data and what they will do when it leaks. Not one person filed against them.
The rules cover credit access businesses, the licensed storefronts and websites that arrange short-term loans against a paycheck or a car title. A licensee holding records on 5,000 or more consumers would have to maintain a written information security program modeled on the federal rule that governs banks and other financial firms, including a written incident response plan and periodic risk assessments. Any licensee would have to notify the state within 30 days of a data breach affecting 250 or more Texas residents, and keep those notices for four years.
The consumer credit office that drafted them reports a single informal comment, from a trade association of credit access businesses, which supported the changes, and no comments at all after the proposal was published Sept. 4. The comment period closed Oct. 4. No filing from a consumer organization appears in the record the office posted. The rest of the package is plumbing: applications move onto the multistate licensing system mortgage regulators already use, “principal party” becomes “key individual,” the option to transfer a license to a buyer disappears in favor of a fresh application, and the duty to display a printed license is repealed.
The same office brings a near-identical rewrite for motor vehicle installment sales, out for comment rather than adoption, and a plain-language review that would let signature loan contracts be written at a ninth-grade reading level instead of eighth and would repeal two sets of model forms nobody uses. Also listed is a petition asking the commission to open rulemaking on property tax lenders, which appears nowhere in the office’s published rule docket; who filed it, and what it seeks, could not be established before publication.
Scale is the thing to hold onto. Texans took out roughly 1.8 million new payday and auto title loans in 2025, and credit access businesses charged about $1.9 billion in fees across all their contracts that year, by the office’s own reporting. The second figure covers renewals too, and counts only the storefront’s own fees, not the lender’s interest. Every one of those contracts leaves behind a name, an address, a bank account or a car.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 AM, Friday, October 16, 2026, or upon adjournment of the audit committee. TRD 2026005921 was filed October 7 at 7:17 a.m.
- Where
- Barbara Jordan State Office Building, second floor meeting room 2.034, 1601 Congress Ave., Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Finance Commission of Texas — 11 governor-appointed members under Finance Code §11.101: two bankers, a savings executive, a consumer credit executive, a mortgage originator and six public members. Chair Phillip A. Holt of Bonham.
- Format
- Four sections covering the commission, the banking department, the consumer credit office and the savings and mortgage department. Eleven items are taken without discussion; five agenda items may go to closed session.
- Live video
- None found. The notice gives a phone number but no stream address, and the commission posts audio recordings of past meetings rather than video.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · commission meetings page
Commission members
- Phillip A. Holt — chair; Bonham; consumer credit executive; term ends February 2028.
- Laura Nassri Warren — vice chair; Palmhurst; public member; architect.
- David W. Osborn — El Paso; banking member; term ends February 2030.
- William “Chip” Jenkins — Rockport; bank chief executive; appointed June 2026.
- Troy L. Lambden — Graham; savings member; term ends February 2030.
- Sharon McCormick — Frisco; mortgage loan originator; reappointed June 2026.
- Robert I. Borochoff — Houston; public member; term ends February 2028.
- Kathleen K. Fields — San Antonio; public member; certified public accountant.
- Glen Martin Green — Dallas; public member; term ends February 2028.
- Miguel Romano Jr. — Austin; public member; term ends February 2030.
- Bradford “Luke” Ledbetter — Austin; public member; appointed June 2026.
Names are from the commission’s published member history and its October 2025 minutes, cross-checked against the governor’s appointment release of June 9, 2026, and checked October 8; all 11 seats appear filled. The commission’s own members page would not render in full and was not relied on. The June release assigns no seat category to Jenkins or Ledbetter; the categories here are inferred from their stated occupations and from the two seats that fell vacant, and are not confirmed. That release spells Warren’s first name “Lauren” in its headline and “Laura” in its text; agency documents use Laura. The fee total is the Dispatch’s addition of the four product-category figures the consumer credit office prints for calendar year 2025. The loan count is the Dispatch’s addition of the eleven loan-size rows the office prints under each of those four categories; the office publishes no category totals for new extensions of credit. Both rest on data the office compiled as of March 24, 2026.