Florida Governor DeSantis signs Florida House Bill 989 into Law, Creating a Customer Complaint and Investigation Process for House Bill 3, and Expanding the Applicability of House Bill 3 to a Broader Set of Financial Institutions.
On May 2, 2024, Governor DeSantis signed Florida House Bill 989 (HB 989) into law. HB 989 amends section 655.0323, Florida Statutes, Titled “Unsafe and unsound practices[,]” which was created by Florida House Bill 3 to, among other things:
(i) create a customer complaint process for customers who suspect that a financial institution violated an “[u]nsafe and unsound practice” standard in section 655.0323(2), Florida Statutes when denying, cancelling, suspending or terminating services or by discriminating against a person in making services available, or in the terms or conditions of such services;
(ii) create an investigatory process within the Florida Office of Financial Regulation (OFR) for customer complaints; and
(iii) modify the applicability of section 655.0323, Florida Statutes by replacing “all financial institutions subject to the financial institutions codes” with “financial institutions as defined in s. 655.005” of the Florida Statutes, resulting in potentially requiring nationally-chartered and non-Florida chartered or licensed banks with customers in Florida in becoming subject to section 655.0323, Florida Statutes, irrespective of whether they maintain physical presence in Florida.
On Monday, the Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS) published a notice of development of proposed rules (“Rule Development Notice”) to begin implementing HB 989. Together with the Rule Development Notice, the DFS has issued (collectively with the Rule Development Notice, the “HB 989 Implementing Documents”): (i) preliminary text of the proposed rules to implement HB 989; (ii) the Form Attestation of Compliance that will be reincorporated to conform with HB 989; (iii) preliminary text for the Complaint Form that customers would use to initiate a complaint; and (iv) preliminary text for the Complaint Response Report Form that financial institutions would use to respond to customer complaints. The DFS is expected to issue proposed rules in short order, at which point financial institutions may file comments in response to the rulemaking.
HB 989 and the HB 989 Implementing Documents leave a number of issues unanswered that we plan to discuss with the OFR during our next event on May 28, 2024. Some of the topics we intend to discuss include: (i) the applicability of section 655.0323, Florida Statutes to financial institutions that are not chartered or licensed by the OFR, but that either maintain physical presence in Florida or that do not maintain physical presence in Florida, but provide services to customers in Florida; (ii) how the OFR intends to oversee compliance with section 655.0323, Florida Statutes by affected financial institutions (and particularly, newly affected institutions); (iii) the OFR’s investigation process and expectations for accessing books and records of financial institutions; and (iv) OFR’s expectations for responses to customer complaints.
As we reported previously, HB 989 does not incorporate language creating a private right of action for customers to sue financial institutions for damages that was proposed in a prior version of HB 989 (i.e., Florida House Bill 585). This revision came following FIBA’s visit to Tallahassee. We are glad to have worked with the FBA to achieve this result, and we are grateful to Florida legislative leaders for hearing our concerns.
We will follow-up in the coming days with details for the May 28 event, where we will discuss HB 989 with the OFR.