House Finance panel approves Banking Department budget after commissioners lay out staffing, exam demands

The House Finance Division I approved the New Hampshire Banking Department’s fiscal 2026–27 budget after Bank Commissioner Amelia Galdieri told lawmakers the self-funded agency needs to expand travel and training lines to supervise growing trust-company assets and fintech licensees.

Galdieri, who introduced the department’s request, said the department is “a consumer protection focused regulatory agency that supervises a wide variety of financial institutions” and described two operating “buckets” — a banking and trust division and a consumer credit division. She told the committee the trust industry is growing in New Hampshire and that recent legislation will expand routine examinations of auto dealers that take finance applications, increasing the department’s exam load by roughly 300 exams over the next two fiscal years.

The department is largely people-centered: Galdieri said the budget is roughly 86 percent salaries and benefits and noted the department has 53 positions “and all of those positions will be filled on March 21.” She emphasized the need for travel and training budgets to allow examiners to go on‑site to large fintech and money‑transmitter firms and to learn complex technology-driven business models: “Most of these large companies want our examiners in their office doing the examination,” she said.

Galdieri explained the Banking Department is self-funded. She described the standard cycle: the Legislature provides an initial appropriation, the department collects fees and fines during the fiscal year, and if collections fall short the statute permits an assessment on chartered and licensed entities to fully refund the initial appropriation. She also pointed committee members to RSA 383:11 for the statutory method that apportions the year‑end assessment by asset size.

Lawmakers pressed for detail about where additional revenue will come from and whether fees are rising. Galdieri said fees charged to licensees were not increasing; instead the department’s revenue rise largely reflects scheduled staff step increases and assessments tied to asset size. She described how the department converted some administrative positions to examiner roles and reduced office footprint and paper storage to absorb additional exam workload without requesting new permanent positions.

Representative (unspecified) moved to accept the Banking Department budget as presented in HP 1; Representative Griffin seconded the motion. Committee minutes record a show-of-hands approval with no roll-call tally provided.

What’s next: The Banking Department will use the approved FY26–27 appropriations to increase travel and training lines for examiners and to continue implementing the department’s reorganization to meet the growth in trust companies and fintech licensees.

Ending: The department left the committee with a reminder that the office is heavily examiner-driven and that, absent the travel and training resources approved in the budget, Galdieri said she sometimes must tell licensed entities she cannot send examiners on site even when the company is willing to reimburse travel costs.