House committee reviews bill requiring annual Department of Financial Regulation report

Representative Priestley introduced H.124 on Feb. 12, 2025, asking the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development to require the Commissioner of Financial Regulation to prepare an annual supervision and regulation report covering persons, services and products under the department’s jurisdiction.

Maria Bridal, legislative counsel, read the bill’s core requirement: “the Commissioner of Financial Regulation shall prepare an annual supervision and regulation report applicable to persons, services, and products subject to the Department’s jurisdiction.” She told the committee the initial report would be due “on January fifteenth of next year and then annually thereafter.”

Sponsor remarks and committee discussion framed the bill as an effort to increase legislative and public transparency about DFR activity — examinations, investigations, enforcement actions and consumer complaints — and about fee revenues the department collects. Representative Priestley said the proposal was prompted by “a lot of questions…coming up in a variety of different bills” and by comparisons with other states that already publish similar reports.

Doug, the state auditor, told the committee he supports transparency and that DFR already includes some performance data in its budget submission. “I’m a big fan of transparency and accountability,” he said, and noted the department reports some outputs in the state’s budget documents required by statute (cited in testimony as 32 3 0 7 c 2). He also said the auditor’s office has just started an audit of customer-service performance for several state entities, including the insurance division of DFR, and recommended a simple entry point for public users: “I would encourage you to just put a table of contents on your main page.”

Sandy, identified in testimony as the Commissioner of the Department of Financial Regulation, said the department is willing to improve transparency but raised concerns about the bill’s breadth and the resources needed to comply. “I have to say that the language of the bill is overly broad,” she said, and warned that some requested data are confidential or not collected in the requested form. The commissioner and DFR staff described existing public resources — company lists, enforcement actions, solvency letters and other materials already posted on the department website — and recommended clarifying the bill’s scope so reporting would not duplicate available information.

Emily Brown of DFR’s Insurance Division echoed the commissioner’s point that the department already publishes a substantial amount of material but that it is scattered across pages and can be “very overwhelming to access.” Brown suggested the department could work with the committee to compile existing material into a more navigable report and add specific data points where gaps exist. Committee members and staff discussed producing a concise, policy‑focused briefing (for example, a short presentation with links to deeper materials) rather than a long, encyclopedic report.

Committee members pressed practical questions: which divisions and industries are meant by “each industry,” how to handle lines of business such as captives (which are not consumer-facing), and whether the report should include topics for which DFR does not currently collect data (for example, affordability measures in banking and securities). DFR officials said some items would be straightforward to compile (aggregate complaint counts, enforcement actions), while other items — market availability and affordability at the Vermont level or ERISA‑market conditions for health coverage — could require significant new work or be outside the department’s usual scope.

Several members suggested narrowing or clarifying the bill to specify which divisions or lines of business the report should cover and to identify recipient committees. The committee discussed timing options, including a biennial or November delivery before a new biennium, so legislators could use the report when considering policy or budget proposals.

No formal committee vote or directed motion occurred during the hearing. Multiple committee members and DFR staff agreed to meet informally to refine the bill language and identify an approach that balances transparency with administrative burden. DFR offered to collaborate on a concise, navigable product pulled from existing public materials and augmented where the committee indicates additional data are necessary.

If the committee moves the bill forward, staff said they will need to specify the report’s scope, the required data elements, confidentiality safeguards for investigations, which legislative committees should receive the report, and any timeline or staffing support to produce it.