No. SB 7044
Filed under Local Government.
Public Records/Custodians of Gold Coin and Silver Coin; Expanding a public records exemption for certain information obtained by the Office of Financial Regulation concerning or during the course of an investigation or examination conducted by the office, including customer and consumer complaints, to incorporate the inclusion of money transmitters acting as custodians of gold coin and silver coin as authorized by chapter 2025-100, Laws of Florida; expanding a public records exemption for deferred presentment transactions to incorporate the inclusion of money transmitters acting as custodians of gold coin and silver coin as authorized by chapter 2025-100, Laws of Florida; providing for future legislative review and repeal of the exemption; providing a statement of public necessity, etc.
Plain English Summary
AI-GENERATEDA separate law now lets banks and money transmitters act as custodians of gold and silver coin. This bill extends the state's existing confidentiality rules for financial-regulator investigations and consumer complaints to cover those new custodians.
Records the Office of Financial Regulation collects while investigating these custodians, including customer complaints, payment-transaction data, and deferred-presentment records, stay confidential just as they already do for other money-services businesses and banks.
The bill also adds a missing piece to money-laundering reports filed with the regulator: those reports are now exempt from the state constitution's public-records guarantee, not just the ordinary public records statute.
Each of these confidentiality provisions is set to automatically expire around 2031 unless lawmakers renew it, following the standard review cycle Florida applies to public records exemptions.
AIReaffirms and sunset-dates the existing confidentiality for Office of Financial Regulation investigation, examination, and consumer-complaint records under s. 560.129, extending that protection to custodians of gold coin and silver coin now that a separate law defines them as money transmitters.
AIExtends the existing confidentiality for the Office of Financial Regulation's payment-instrument-transaction database and its deferred-presentment-provider database, which shield the identity of payors, payees, drawers, and providers, to cover transactions involving gold and silver coin custodians.
AIReaffirms and sunset-dates the existing confidentiality for Office of Financial Regulation examination records under s. 655.057, extending it to records concerning gold coin or silver coin products or services that financial institutions are now authorized to offer.
AIAdds a citation to the state constitution's right-of-access provision to the existing confidentiality for money-laundering and terrorist-financing reports filed with the Office of Financial Regulation under s. 655.50, which previously cited only the statutory public records exemption.