Texas’s banking and lending regulators meet Friday to finish one data security rule and launch a nearly identical one, aimed at two of the state’s most heavily used small-dollar lenders. Comment on the pawnshop half closed August 2; the payday and title lending half has not opened.
The finished piece would make every pawnshop keep written policies for an information security program under the federal rule that requires financial firms to safeguard customer data. Shops holding records on 5,000 or more customers would also have to keep a written incident response plan and written risk assessments. Every pawnshop would have to hold for four years the text of any notice it sends customers or a state agency after a data breach. Regulators say the underlying duties already exist in other law and this only makes them checkable by an examiner. Not one comment was filed at any stage of the review.
The second half applies the same template to credit access businesses — the storefronts that broker payday and auto title loans rather than making them, and collect a separate fee for doing so. A draft posted in July carries over the identical security program requirement and the four-year breach-notice rule, and separately moves license applications onto the national licensing system used by mortgage regulators, swapping the term “principal party” for “key individual” and repealing the rule that tells shops to display a license. Informal comment closed August 5. Friday’s vote would send it to the Texas Register for the formal round.
The rest of the agenda is housekeeping with money attached. Commissioners take up a rewrite of the savings bank rules, readopt the state bank and money services rules, adopt a five-year strategic plan, and approve next year’s operating budgets for the three agencies they oversee, along with what the notice calls future long-term spending on a new commission building. A closed session covers the pay and duties of the executive director and the three agency commissioners.
One litigation item has already run its course. The agenda lists a suit the savings and mortgage lending commissioner filed against a Fort Bend County loan processing business and two individuals; the county’s court records show a final default judgment and injunction entered July 8, after more than seven months of failed attempts to serve one defendant. The commission’s own posting of the case number is a digit short of the court’s. Watch whether the credit access proposal draws any comment once it publishes — the pawnshop version drew none.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9 a.m. CT Friday, August 21, 2026, or when the audit committee finishes; that committee starts at 8:30 a.m. in the same room. The notice was filed August 12.
- Where
- William F. Aldridge Hearing Room, Finance Commission Building, 2601 North Lamar Blvd., Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Finance Commission of Texas — 11 members the governor appoints with Senate consent to six-year terms, including two bankers, a savings executive, a consumer credit executive, a mortgage loan officer and six public members, one a certified public accountant. Phillip A. Holt chairs.
- Format
- In person and by webinar. General public comment is a standing agenda item, but not on a rule proposal whose comment period has closed unless a majority votes to allow it. Remote attendees must register in advance.
- Live video
- None. Meetings run as audio-only webinars; recordings post afterward on the commission’s 2026 archive page.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · commission agenda
Commission members
- Phillip A. Holt, Bonham — chair; senior vice president, Snap Finance.
- Laura Nassri Warren, Palmhurst — vice chair; architecture firm owner.
- Robert Borochoff, Houston — restaurant group owner and chief executive.
- Kathleen K. Fields, San Antonio — retired audit partner; certified public accountant.
- Marty Green, Dallas — attorney in charge at a mortgage law firm.
- William “Chip” Jenkins, Rockport — president and chief executive, The First State Bank.
- Troy L. Lambden, Graham — senior risk officer at a savings institution.
- Luke Ledbetter, Austin — chief executive, Kestrel Group.
- Sharon McCormick, Frisco — senior loan officer, PrimeLending.
- David W. Osborn, El Paso — president and chief executive, WestStar Bank.
- Miguel Romano Jr., Austin — president, Ascension Texas Foundations.
The roster follows the commission’s own members page, cross-checked against the governor’s June 9, 2026 announcement, which appointed Jenkins and Ledbetter and reappointed McCormick and Warren. All 11 seats are filled and none is expired; four terms end February 1, 2028. Before June, four seats had sat expired since February, and two of those members are no longer on the roster. Commission policy keeps members serving until replacements are named. The three agencies it oversees are led by Leslie L. Pettijohn, consumer credit commissioner; Hector Retta, savings and mortgage lending commissioner; and Charles G. Cooper, banking commissioner. Accommodation requests: Brenda Medina, (512) 936-6222.