Senate Banking Financial Institutions — 2026-03-18

The Senate Committee on Banking and Financial Institutions will come to order. We have two bills on today's agenda. It definitely appears like we don't have a quorum, so we will begin as a subcommittee and therefore we have one item on consent calendar and one item to be heard. Being no quorum is established, we will move on to the item to be heard which is item number two. That happens to be my bill. So I will turn the gavel over to Vice Chair very capable Vice Chair Neila.

Thank you. Good afternoon Mr. Chair and future members coming. I present for your consideration SB 972, a bill that modernizes our licensing law that covers non bank lenders. The California Financing Law, also known as cfl, has a long history and statute and works well for traditional lending markets. But over the past two decades we have seen incredible growth in large commercial loan financing that has developed outside of the traditional banking system. This form of financing primarily serves middle market firms with an annual with annual revenues of 10 million to more than $1 billion. These companies account for one third of private sector employment and GDP are an incredibly important segment of our economy. To serve the capital needs of these firms, investment funds and business development companies have originated more than 1 trillion of loans to these companies in recent years. Now, unlike states, unlike other states, California law requires these financing entities to obtain a lending license, despite both the lender and borrower being highly sophisticated parties. Now, while obtaining a license is achievable, the process can take over a year or a year or even more, which can effectively prohibit some investment funds from serving California borrowers. This bill establishes a new streamlined process that allows a regulated investment manager to obtain an umbrella license that covers all the funds that the manager advises. So when an investment manager starts a new fund or brings an existing fund under its management, the CFL license is already in place and the fund can immediately engage in lawful commercial lend. I would like to thank the sponsors for working with us over the past few years in landing on this specific approach. We have arrived at a solution that encourages mutually beneficial lending activity in California while preserving the ability for DFPI to oversee the market and to pay for the and to pay for the cost of that oversight. I will now turn it over to bill sponsor LSTA who can provide testimony and answer any questions the committee may have through the Chair.

Thank you, Senator Grayson, Chair Grayson, Vice Chair Nillo and members of the committee. Good afternoon. I represent lsta, the leading financial trade association representing the interests of the U.S. corporate loan markets. Among our 600/plus members are approximately 250 asset managers who collectively extend hundreds of billions of dollars of loans to US Companies, including companies based in California. The current California licensing framework, administered by the FBI presents practical challenges for these lenders. Asset managers operating through multiple affiliated lending vehicles must complete duplicative licensing processes for each of its affiliated lending vehicles. This has led to very significant delays, up to as much as 18 months, and as a direct result, in many cases, loans are not offered to worthy California companies. SB972 would help address these challenges by creating a new category of license for SEC registered investment advisors, allowing them to obtain a single license at the SEC registered Advisor level, which also covers their lending vehicles with the fee paid for the adviser and each covered vehicle. Importantly, there would be no reduction in oversight since managers would continue to be subject to to the exact same scrutiny of dfpi. Consequently, the administrative burden for both asset managers and the DFPI would be lightened while the amount of fees payable to DFPI would actually increase. By enabling institutional funds to participate more readily in California's commercial lending markets, SB972 would substantially increase the amount of loan capital available to support California's middle market and large businesses through promote job creation and strengthen regional economic growth. On behalf of our LSTA members, I urge the members of the committee to support this critical bill. We'd also like to thank Senator Grayson and his staff for their leadership on this issue.

And that is your only primary witness. So is there anybody else in the audience in favor of this bill to testify? Me too. Seeing no one come forward, are there. There is no registered opposition, but is there anyone here who wishes to speak in opposition to the bill? Seeing no one come forward, we'll bring it back to the committee. For anybody within the reach of my voice that is a member of the Banking and Finance Committee meeting, please get yourself here post haste. We're one member shy of a quorum, and this is the only bill that we are presenting today. So it would be appreciated to come down here now and. Do we have any questions or. There we go. We got a quorum now, so let's. While we have the opportunity, let's establish the quorum.

Aye. We're here.

Here.

Okay, we have a quorum. Questions or comments from the committee? Appears that they're well, we have a motion on the bill. Appears there are no comments. Senator Grayson, you may close.

Okay, so let's call the roll.

Aye.

Aye.

That's four nothing. We will keep that open for other members that hopefully will speedily come down here. But I will now turn it back over to Chair Grayson.

Senator Grayson. Aye. Grayson. Aye. Nelo, I. Nilo. I. Cervantes. Cervantes. I. Hurtado. Reyes. Richardson. Strickland. Strickland. I. That one has four.

Sa.

Consent calendar Chair voting aye. Senator Hurtado. Reyes. Richardson. Oh, sorry. Reyes.

Aye. Richardson. Aye. Richardson. Aye. A six.

Motion is due. Pass to consent calendar on Judiciary Chair voting aye. Senator Hutado. Reyes. Reyes, Aye. Richardson, Aye. Richardson. Aye. That has six. Oh, I'm sorry. I did say consent. Is that due? Pass to Judiciary. Yeah, you can just reread that.

Senate Bill 972. Motion is due. Pass to Senate Judiciary Committee.

And that is six votes. And that bill is out of committee. Thank you very much to members for showing up and voting. That concludes our business for the day. And Banking Committee is now adjourned.