Senate Standing Committee on Banking and Financial Institutions

[Roll Call]

All right, thank you. We are going to go ahead and begin our hearing, and we do have, one second while we do that. We don't have any bills on consent.

All right. So we're going to go ahead and begin and we welcome Senator Glazer, who's going to present his bill, Senate Bill 869. You may begin when you are ready.

Thank you. Thank you Madam Chair and members. First, I want to accept the amendments as suggested by, in the analysis. I also want to thank the committee staff and you, Madam Chair, for your great work on this issue. We began these conversations a year ago, actually, and I was saying in an earlier committee, it's not always easy to call yourself a measure. You're doing a two-year bill.

But we also made that call on this measure last year to take the time to try to do it right. In the past few years, I've introduced two bills legislating in this alternative commercial financing area, both of which have been signed into law. In 2018, SB 1235 created the first in the nation, truth in lending disclosure for small business borrowers.

That was followed up this past year by SB 33, which removed a sunset provision of the 1235 requirement that commercial finance providers disclose the total cost of financing as an estimated APR. And that brings us to the bill that's before you today. As small business borrowers have increasingly, increasingly struggled to access traditional bank loans, they have resorted to alternative forms of financing to start, maintain, and grow their businesses.

Alternative financing products include, and this is, I know, an education for you and for many, these alternative financing products include merchant advances, factoring, lease financing, all of which are structured in ways that do not make them, quote, unquote, loans. While these forms of financing are a vibrant part of the market, the providers and the brokers have gone unregulated, leaving borrowers unprotected. And unfortunately, the gaps in California's commercial financing laws have allowed some bad actors to take advantage of small business borrowers.

At times, unscrupulous actors steer small business borrowers into higher-cost financing so they can get a better commission. Borrowers have been known to be encouraged to sign financing contracts with clauses that waive their right to legal representation and proper court procedures. So this bill before you today levels the playing field for loan and non-loan products by requiring licensure for brokers and commercial finance providers. It regulates predatory broker practices and it closes loopholes in our California commercial financing law.

Under this bill, commercial finance providers and brokers would need to obtain a license from the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation in order to operate in the state while also paying licensing fees. Requiring licensure removes the unfair advantage that unregulated and non-loan financing companies have over-regulated lenders, leveling the playing field for stakeholders. The bill also regulates predatory practices, such as some brokers acting as, quote, merchant cash advance mills that focus on placing applicants into high-rate financing.

Now, it does this by requiring that brokers prominently disclose the average, minimum and maximum APR for the financing they place clients into in the previous calendar year so borrowers can compare brokers. When you think about it, whether you're a new business or a business that has something that breaks down, you have a pizza business and the pizza oven breaks down and you need a new pizza oven.

If you're going to keep doing your work and you go to a broker or a lender trying to see if you can borrow money in an urgent situation, how do you compare that lender and that broker's offerings with someone else? And it's a place of great vulnerability for any small business person. And of course, what's really important there is that they can comparison shop.

They can see what the marketplace is offering and not be maneuvered into a place where, for the benefit of the lender, they're going to make more money or they're going to make a greater commission. Now, my bill also closes loopholes in our current law by prohibiting any action that be construed as a confession of judgment. Confessions of judgment prohibit borrowers from legal representation if they default on a loan.

Now, confessions of judgment, and I know these are terms that maybe you're not all familiar with, and I certainly have learned a lot in this space. Confessions of judgment were actually prohibited in California in 2022, but some commercial finance providers found loopholes by restructuring language in contracts to create similar tools that waive a borrower's right to legal representation and proper court procedure, and that gets fixed in this bill. Now, there are continuing conversations about a part of this bill we're going to hear from.

I know there are still some opponents out there, supporters, but there are still some opponents that require brokers to disclose at the moment of providing financing offers the lowest possible APR a recipient may qualify for. And I commit to you that I'll continue to work with opposition and stakeholders to ensure that small business borrowers are protected with me today, I have two witnesses, and I appreciate that. Thank you for giving me the time to kind of explain this bill. It can be very complicated.

I have two witnesses today, Heidi Pickman, on behalf of the California Association for Micro Enterprise Opportunity CAMEO, and you're allowing them to come to the table. Okay, so Heidi can come forward. And Louis Caditz-Peck is a senior fellow at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and a former fintech small business financing exec also here in support. With that, I respectfully ask for your support today.

Great. Thank you. Now we will hear from witnesses in support.

Chairman Limon, Vice Chair Niello, and members of the committee. Good afternoon. CAMEO is a statewide network of business service providers and community lenders and a strong supporter of SB 869. We commend Senator Glazer and the entire California Legislature and Governor Newsom for leading the country in responsible small business lending practices. SB 869 continues that leadership. It does three things.

It regulates predatory practices by brokers, levels the playing field for loan and non-loan products, and closes loopholes in our current law. Working backwards, California's transparent price disclosure regulations are groundbreaking, and the legislature voted unanimously last year to make them permanently. They still contain a few loopholes that can enable bad actors to quote misleadingly low prices without the DFPI Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, even knowing. They ask bad actors to police themselves and slap their own wrists.

DFPI acknowledged the need to correct this in the rulemaking process, and SB 869 does just that and addresses this needed fix and closes several other loopholes that New York state closed when it passed its disclosure law, which was based on California's. Small businesses need access to capital, and believe it or not, our small businesses may know their business. They may know how to make great pizza. They may know their customers.

But the small businesses, from our experience and our members, deal with approximately 150,000 small businesses every year. Their financial acumen is not that of a CFO or somebody who would actually, so most small businesses that we're talking about, they're under 10 employees and they're small and they don't have the financial acumen. So they need access to capital, whether it's a loan or non-loan product, and they don't necessarily distinguish it, and the regulatory framework shouldn't distinguish the difference and should treat the products the same.

SB 869 takes away this unfair advantage that unregulated non-loan financing companies have over regulated lenders by providing all types of small business financing companies with the same roles to play by a hallmark of market competition. Additionally, the bill prevents several other predatory practices that takes advantage of small businesses that the Senator mentioned, such as skirting around California's ban on confessions of judgment and confidentiality clauses that may bully small businesses from speaking out if they're victimized.

Closing loopholes and creating a competitive market for small business financing will catalyze good lending to small businesses. The opposition wants to narrow the bill so loopholes remain and remain unregulated. They are the same opposition who unsuccessfully sued California last year to overturn our transparent price disclosure regulations, the same regulations this legislature voted unanimously to pass last year and preserve. Next, my colleague will talk about the third thing, and that's reigning in predatory practices by brokers.

Thank you, and I respectfully ask for your aye vote on SB 869.

Thank you may begin.

Honorable Members, my name is Lewis Caditz-Peck. I'm a senior fellow at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. We're part of the Responsible Business Lending Coalition, which includes both for-profit financing companies and nonprofit advocates. I'm also personally a former fintech small business financing executive and a former appointed member of the federal CFPB's consumer advisory board. Small businesses today are routinely steered by brokers into unnecessarily expensive financing because it pays the broker a higher fee. This echoes one of the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis.

In fact, reports describe subprime mortgage brokers who lost their mortgage licenses simply moving over to the totally unregulated Wild West of small business financing, brokering in particular. So I'd like to walk you through an advertisement that's just been passed out. Thank you. From a merchant cash advance company to brokers. So in this advertisement, what we see here is the financing company is offering brokers huge commission payouts, and it also offers brokers. This is all caps, "Max Upsell, 12 points."

So, in other words, after the financing company quotes a price to the broker, the broker then turns around and they're permitted to upsell the borrower a hidden fee as high as they think the borrower might take up to 12%. In this case, it's a 12% broker fee, and we see up to 15% routinely. The advertisement goes on to ask brokers, with a deal this good, why would you even consider submitting your deals elsewhere?

So this financing company is explicitly saying that they are trying to avoid competition, not by actually competing and lowering their prices, but by overcharging borrowers so they can pay brokers these huge commission payouts. This bill would allow DFBI to license brokers so that small businesses can seek accountability if they're mistreated. And it would also help small businesses distinguish between brokers that offer. There are lots of good brokers out there.

And this bill would allow small businesses to distinguish between brokers that are going to help them place them into the best financing available to them. From brokers that are just these merchant cash advance mills that just send people into triple-digit financing that pays the broker a 15% fee. Because, as the Senator described, it would require brokers to disclose the minimum, maximum, and average APR that they placed borrowers in in the previous year. I urge you to pass this bill. Thank you.

Great. Thank you. Now that we've heard from witnesses in support, we're going to hear any others in the room. You may come up to the podium and please just state your affiliation and position.

Sure. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members. Christopher Sanchez, on behalf of the Rise Economy in strong support.

Thank you. Any other in support? All right, seeing nobody else in support in this room, we'll now move on to lead witnesses in opposition. You may come to the table, and you're welcome to stay and move over or just give them a little space. It's up to you. Whichever you'd like.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and members. Chris Rose on behalf of Rapid Finance and Capita. First of all, I want to thank Senator Glazer and his staff for their many hours of working on this bill. It's been a long haul and the same things I'd like to pass along to Mr. Burdock and the committee. We had a lot of conversations and all of our input was thoughtfully considered, so we wanted to thank you for that. We agree on the goals of this bill wholeheartedly.

We support the licensure of providers of commercial financing products in the manner that's equivalent to commercial financing products for those providing commercial loans. Secondly, we support commercial financing brokers to be licensed in the same manner equivalent to the licensed juror of those entities providing brokering to commercial loans. And lastly, we support adding robust protections to California law, ensuring that California consumers have protection from unscrupulous behaviors by financing brokers. How to accomplish these shared goals. That's, of course, the trick of this bill.

It's the trick that I think of most bills, and we have not yet found that happy medium. We still have a few outstanding issues that we're going to be discussing with Senator Glazer and his staff, and we look forward to doing that. So again, thank you very much for providing that opportunity for discussion.

Thank you.

Here we go. Hi, Pat Joyce on behalf of Forward Financing, a sales-based company that would fall into the provider bucket under this new licensing proposal. We have an opposed, unless amended position. Forward Financing supports the licensing of providers, and brokers in the state generally think that's a good thing. And I think a lot of the goals that were stated by the author and the proponents, we also agree with, and we appreciate the amendments referenced, the analysis, and the author agreeing to take those amendments.

Thank you. We think that moves it in a better position. As my colleague Chris said, there are still some outstanding issues, and I heard the author address one or reference one earlier about disclosing the lowest APR. That's certainly something that we would like to work closely with you on addressing and finding some agreement. But for now, we appreciate the conversation and look forward to working on this further.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you. All right. Any other witnesses in opposition in the room? Yes, if you can just come to the podium. State your name and affiliation, please.

Hi, Carolyn Veal-Hunter. On behalf of the Revenue Based Financial Coalition, we are actually not opposed to the bill, but we do have some concerns that we look forward to working with the author on as the bill moves through the process, and we appreciate his willingness to consider those concerns.

Thank you. All right. Seeing nobody else in the room, we'll go ahead and move it to our members. And we have Senator Min.

Thank you for your testimony and appreciate the author bringing the bill forward. As some of you know, earlier in my career, I cut my teeth as a staffer on Capitol Hill during the 2007-08 financial crisis and then as a Policy Director at the Center for American Progress. And it strikes me that a lot of what we're seeing in the small business lending space, as I think you mentioned, and I forgot your name again, sorry, Lewis. Yes.

As Lewis mentioned, you're seeing a lot of the same types of patterns. I had a question and then a comment, but the question is, during the subprime mortgage crisis, the financing was typically coming from securitization and then the collateralization of that into different types of derivative products. Where is the financing for this coming from?

Because when I see this flyer giving brokers a lot of points, it suggests to me that Wall Street is involved, that there's some kind of robust secondary market for these types of loans. Can you tell me a little bit more about what's happening with these. And that could be the opposition as well.

I think it'd be wonderful to hear from them, too. From what I understand, merchant cash bands companies, they raise warehouse lines, sometimes from traditional banks, sometimes from hedge funds. And we could share more information about some of the specifics.

Okay. I'd be interested in that as a follow up. And one of the things I've noticed in my communities, in the ones I represent, is that a lot of these loans, one, do appear predatory on their face, both in terms of the types of product features that they have as well as the types of lending practices that are involved. And a lot of times they target those who are lower financial literacy, particularly immigrant-owned small businesses.

And we've seen a lot of this, and that was one of the reasons I authored SB 666 last year, which thanks for your help on getting that passed. And obviously, during COVID, the pandemic, we saw a lot of stress on small businesses. So I think this is an important bill.

And I appreciate the conversation that we're having because when we're talking about regulating access to credit, you have to balance that access to credit, which I think the opposition is bringing up with consumer protection at the end of the day. And obviously, we have seen a lot of evidence of predatory lending. Trying to get that balance right is really tricky.

And I know you're working hard to try to make that happen, but I will support this bill, would move the bill at the appropriate time, and just want to thank you guys for what I hope is a continued robust conversation going forward.

Great. Thank you very much. We do have a motion by Senator Min, but we will continue the conversation. I have Senator Caballero followed by Vice Chairman Niello.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I have a couple of questions, and maybe it's to the opposition. I guess number one is I don't understand what a non-loan is. If you're loaning money, if any money transaction is happening to me, that's a loan. So I'm just wondering, first is we've set up this category of non-loan, but the other is what's the issue around the lowest APR? I'm not sure I understand what that issue is. And maybe both of those are questions for you, Senator.

So I'm happy to try to address both of them. So the APR now is law, and you have lenders and brokers that are in the marketplace lending money, and they're making different agreements in the course of that work. And what we're trying to do there is to make sure that a potential borrower has some knowledge of that person and their record and what kind of APR they're actually getting.

So we create three ranges for them to disclose as a part of the bill in its current form. It's something that we're continuing to talk about with the opponents about, but it's to give kind of a steady comparison that it's simple to understand and follow at different levels from the lender's point of view. They're going to say, hey, every loan is different. Your credit, your needs, how long you're going to have the money, when you're going to pay it back.

And given all the different new financing schemes, if it's not just a flat, we're giving you the money and you're paying us back, but we're going to take a penny out of every credit card transaction, or we're going to use your inventory to borrow against that. This so-called loan has become so different in our modern age for lending money.

And these innovative products aren't just so straightforward like you're getting money for a car, to borrow for a car, and it's cash and you're paying it back, that within the retail world that there's now innovative ways. So that's that traditional, what's a loan and not a loan? And that's really where it becomes dangerous because it's very easy to manipulate in that space.

When I say all it will cost you, if you will give you 10,000 for your pizza oven, but we're just going to take two cent out of every credit card transaction. And you say, well, that sounds like a good deal, but you don't know how long and how much that's actually going to cost you over time. And it gets very manipulative in that space.

And so these non-traditional loans have created this vulnerability in the marketplace, which we're now trying to address, trying to create consistent standards. So a borrower, uneducated borrower, spoken earlier by Senator Min, you go into business not because you get an MBA in finance. Okay? So we're trying to make it as simple and clear so a borrower can make smart decisions. Have I answered your question?

You have, and I really appreciate that because it reminds me a lot of what was happening in the personal credit space as well, where the payday lendings were that you could borrow $800, but you had to pay it in two weeks. And if you didn't, then you ended up in a situation where it doubled, your debt doubled and it could triple. And before you know it, you're paying way more for that $800 than you ever expected to.

And so that was really helpful, I guess, in the APR. That's really important to me because it's one of the features of borrowing that's the most easily understood, if it's clear. And the more that you can manipulate it, the more difficult it becomes as an unsophisticated borrower to understand what the full impact is going to be.

And in particular for a business person, they may be putting up their business as collateral and they could lose a lot more by taking out what they thought was a very simple loan. So I appreciate what you're doing. I really want to second what my good friend Senator Min said about the smaller businesses that many of whom are immigrants, that are looking for a way to be able to continue, especially coming off of COVID and are looking who really have a challenge in the traditional market.

So I appreciate that.

Great. Thank you. Now we'll go to Vice Chair Neillo.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Regulation is good to provide a fair playing field. I agree with that. If the regulatory scheme is overcomplicated or difficult to understand, it will result not in a fairer playing field, but a limited supply as providers might leave the market.

And to the point of the APR, I can see where that's difficult because with sales-based financing, the payback is going to be based upon what the sales of the entity is, and that's totally a function of how they expect sales to be in the future.

So certainly you can say, well, if my sales are going to be at this level and this amount of growth over what I think the term of the loan is going to be, and you don't even know that because based upon the share of sales that the lender is getting, it can be paid off sooner or later. And so all of these variables can feed into what the APR is, but you have to make assumptions relative to the base information, and that's difficult.

And I could see the concerns about that. Probably more importantly is the significant difference in the compensation to the provider of the source of funds and the alternative that could be available, particularly small business loans.

And it might be worth considering that being disclosed as part of the process may be more effective than talking about the APR because low, middle, and high, particularly if we're talking about unsophisticated borrowers, sometimes the optimism of the entrepreneur is going to gravitate toward that low number and think, great, that's what it can be. But the compensation is an objective number.

So I just suggest thinking about that, and one thing that caught my attention is in order to try to make sure that a broker is taking his customers interest into account. We have, I think this is the language that the broker owes a duty to care to and has a duty to act in the highest good faith toward a potential recipient, including the duty to exercise the utmost honesty and integrity toward the potential recipient. I really don't know how you can enforce that.

That can be interpreted in a significantly varying way. And for a regulation, I just think that's challenged language because of the imprecise nature of it. Now, I know you, Senator Glazer, and I know that you will work with the opposition on these things. And so I'm certainly happy to support the bill moving forward on the basis of that. Obviously, I can change my mind as things turn out, but those are the sorts of things that concern me.

Yeah, I threw the Chair. Can I address? Thank you for your thoughtful comments. There are three that you raised. Let me try to answer two of them, and I think I'll turn to my witness to answer the third. The first was about the APR. That was the fight that we had six years ago for reasons that you have identified. But through the work of the legislature, the regulations that came down after four years of work with the stakeholders, that's now settled.

That there is formula in law and in regulation that tells someone exactly how in good faith they should do it. Obviously, circumstances can change, and as you've identified the length of time and the payback, the model can all create differences. But there is a process now for a good faith estimate under law and regulation that at least is settled. There were court cases that all failed. It's now the law of the land.

And through your good work on the unanimous vote of the legislature, that's now the law. So we're now focused now on the lender and borrower or the broker side of the equation, not the APR. The reason APR is in the conversation is because we're trying to find a way, and this is going to get to your third point about the elusiveness of how you define doing their duty. Originally, the thinking behind this bill was to use the word fiduciary obligation.

It's a very common word that we use in our financial world about you have a fiduciary, an oath and a loyalty to doing what's in the interest of that other person that you're working for. And it was because of that issue that you're raising that we've deviated, and deviated from that language to try to get to something more concrete so that we don't want to create uncertainty, we don't want to create a litigious environment for this. No one has any interest in that.

And that's where the bill has now moved to try to define those terms a little bit more concretely. So when we talk about the mid, the average, the maximum, we're trying to now define it more specifically in activity versus that generics. And we'll continue to work on that with the opponents and with all of you, and certainly the expertise that this committee and your staff has brought to this conversation to get to your point.

So you're right, and I think we're going to keep working on it to try to find those objective elements. I do want to turn to one of my witnesses. They want to speak to the issue of lender fees and how this bill handles lender fees, commissions in our measures. Is there something you want to add to that or share about the disclosures that are provided or not?

Well, one thing that we thought about this with the lender fee disclosure Vice Chair, I'm glad you brought it up. There was some research after the subprime mortgage crisis, as Senator Min described, because broker fees played such a role in driving borrowers into less appropriate financing, more expensive financing for them.

And what some research found, interestingly, is that when the brokers disclosed to the borrower more kind of good faith information about themselves, it led the borrowers to trust the brokers more and the brokers not to act more trustworthy. So it had a sort of unintended consequence. It wasn't the most effective. What the Senator described, the concrete thing that the bill does, really, is to arm the borrower with really concrete information about what kind of stuff they can expect from the broker overall.

Not necessarily what every specific transaction would be, but just context to say, hey, when you pull up brokers websites right now, they all look the same. Every broker says, we do SBA loans and we do leases and we do everything. But behind the scenes, some brokers are placing most of their borrowers into SBA loans and some broker, and they're earning 1%. And some brokers are placing most of those borrowers into merchant cash advances that charge the borrowers 100%, 200% APRs and get paid 15%.

And so this way the broker will just say, hey, last year this broker, the minimum we did was 50% APR. The maximum was 200 and the average was 150, versus another one who has different numbers. So the borrower is well informed, kind of what they're working with, with a given broker.

Thank you.

Just a very quick follow-up comment to the point of the level of sophistication of the borrowers and this issue of duty and fiduciary duty and the like. If I were to advise these small businesses that are considering these things, I would make the assumption that whoever I'm doing business with does not have my best interest at heart. That is the much more operable assumption. And I do have a certain amount of experience in this area, particularly in the area of borrowing money.

And we deal with a lot of reputable businesses that loan us more money than sometimes keeps me awake at night. But I do not assume that they have my best interest at heart, and maybe that ought to be the disclosure. Realize that I do not have your best interest at heart. You're the only one to judge that.

I'll call that the Niello amendment. Thank you.

Senator Bradford.

Thank you. I'm curious. Under current law, there's been some new authority given to the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation to oversee some of those unscrupulous practices that you're describing here. Has there been any analysis to determine if the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation's current regulatory oversight is effective in the commercial financing market and the impact the current regulatory oversight has on the availability for commercial financing options in California?

I can say this Senator Bradford. First, thank you for your question. I think the department has limitations. I mean, part of the purpose of this bill is to deal in spots in which they, under law, they have no ability to enforce and to ensure the kind of protections that this bill professes to advance are followed, that there's been workarounds in the financial marketplace that seemingly are legal on their face, and they haven't certainly been challenged. And it's part of the motivation that brings this bill here.

We have consulted with the department. They don't have a formal position on the bill, but I think the team that's been working on this have tried to get their best input, and we feel like we're on the right track. Heidi, do you want to add anything to that?

Currently, these non-loan products that are not considered in the definition of a loan are not under the purview of the department so that's the idea behind this.

Also, in a similar vein, just add that some of the fixes in the bill, the holes that are plugged, follow statements that the FPI put out in their statement of reasons and previous rulemaking, saying, here's something that should be pursued in the future that we don't think we can in this rulemaking.

All right. Seeing no other questions, I want to thank the author. We've worked together in the last year, and I do want to clarify one piece, as was mentioned by the author at the beginning, that the duty of care provision is being amended out. It is one of the amendments, so it's listed on page 14 of 15, item K to delete section 2264 related to the duty of care of a commercial financing broker. So I thought that that would be good to clear up.

And I think that this committee and the legislature will continue to tackle the overall principle of what we're trying to address clarity. Right. In understanding what we're borrowing. And we've had some difficult conversations as it relates to access to capital. We want access to capital for individuals, for small businesses. I see this flyer, and there's a lot listed here. I'm not sure I understand everything that is listed on here, but it sounds great.

And so I think that when we see something like this, it also puts it into practice that even folks who have the best intention and some background in it are also wondering, well, what does this actually mean? I know what it reads, but what is the meaning behind that?

And so we oftentimes, as has been pointed out by a number of members on this committee, we think of all the small business owners, including those that don't have perhaps a background in financing that weren't the MBA majors or degree holders, but that are in our communities and are really important and that we want to preserve. And so who are they?

What backgrounds do they have and will they understand something like this and how do we make it more clear so they understand what they're borrowing and what the cost of borrowing is. And I think that that's really where this is coming from. So I look forward to continuing to work together on this bill. And thank, of course, the Committee staff, your staff, and all those that have been working together. I know that we will continue the conversations also with the opposition as this bill moves forward.

So with that, Senator Glazer, would you like to close?

Thank you, Chair Limon, thank you for addressing one of Senator Niello's points earlier in the analysis that I missed. I want to thank the opposition who have come today because they have acknowledged that we share the same goals. And that's a real big progress point. This was not the same five years ago, six years ago on some of these issues. So I appreciate their acknowledgment of that and my pledge to continue to work together we don't want it to be a murky law.

We want it to be a clear law, and we want people to be able to know how to follow it appropriately, all to the benefit of borrowers that we all are committed to. This committee is committed to that consumer protection, and that's the heritage of the Banking Committee here in the Senate, and I appreciate it. One final thing would be to say that something that you all know, the small business community, we talk a lot about it.

We say we care a lot about it, but we also acknowledge, and I think, as Senator Min mentioned earlier, how vulnerable they can be, especially as it relates to finances. And so the work of this bill, I think, and previous efforts really go to putting the proof behind the rhetoric about caring about our small business people, that we can help them thrive and have a marketplace that they can be successful in, and that means having a lending marketplace that works.

And so we're committed to that as we work on this bill. So with that, respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Great. Thank you. We have a motion by Senator Min. The motion is do pass, but first re-referred to the Committee on Judiciary. We will go ahead and call the roll.

[Roll Call]

She left, but her intention is to abstain anyway. Thank you.

All right. That bill is out with six votes and one not voting. All right. So with that, we will go ahead and adjourn our committee hearing.