HB5384 rewrites how the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (DFPR) funds supervision of several consumer‑finance industries. The bill inserts new, uniform fee-authority provisions into seven statutes — including the Currency Exchange Act, Sales Finance Agency Act, Consumer Installment Loan Act, Debt Management Service Act, Debt Settlement Consumer Protection Act, Safety Deposit License Act, and the Payday Loan Reform Act — giving the Secretary or Director the power to assess and allocate licensing, investigation, and examination costs by rule.
The bill also alters inspection and oversight language in several Acts: it removes the statutory requirement that the Secretary annually investigate every licensed currency exchange and eliminate the statutory instruction to annually review and report the Currency Exchange Section’s operating costs, while for other license types the bill makes annual examinations mandatory and ties exam costs to licensees through Department fee schedules. The measure concentrates funding authority in DFPR, increases rulemaking discretion over fees, and creates operational choices that could shift the fiscal burden of supervision onto regulated firms and, potentially, their customers.
At a Glance
What It Does
HB5384 adds explicit fee sections to multiple consumer‑finance statutes authorizing the Secretary/Director to assess licensing, investigation, and examination expenses against regulated entities and to set those fees by administrative rule. It eliminates a statutory annual investigation and statutory annual cost review for currency exchanges while retaining inspection and subpoena powers and existing per‑day examination fee language.
Who It Affects
Regulated licensees across several industries: community and ambulatory currency exchanges, sales finance agencies, consumer installment lenders, debt managers, debt settlement firms, safety deposit licensees, and payday lenders, as well as DFPR examiners and the Department’s budgeting and rulemaking staff.
Why It Matters
The bill centralizes cost‑recovery authority in DFPR and converts previously explicit legislative duties and funding assumptions into rulemaking discretion. That changes the financing of oversight, may increase compliance costs for small operators, and alters the statutory inspection cadence for currency exchanges versus other consumer‑finance licensees.
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What This Bill Actually Does
HB5384 is primarily an allocation-of-costs and administrative‑authority bill. Rather than creating new substantive consumer protections or revising pricing rules, it inserts a nearly identical "Fees" provision into seven separate statutes.
Each new provision says the expenses of administering the statute — licensing, investigations, examinations — "shall be borne by and assessed against" regulated persons and that the Secretary or Director may establish fee categories and amounts by rule. The language is broad: fees may be allocated "in such proportions and in such manner as the Secretary/Director deems appropriate," and any statutory fees may be amended by rule.
In the Currency Exchange Act the bill removes the existing statutory requirement that the Secretary "shall at least once in each year" investigate each currency exchange and deletes the statutory instruction that the Secretary review the Currency Exchange Section’s operating costs annually and report to the General Assembly if fee increases are necessary. That said, the bill preserves the Secretary's inspection and subpoena powers in Section 16 and keeps the statute's existing per‑day examination fees (the current text shows $250/day per examiner and $150/day for ambulatory examiners).
Section 19.3 retains the Secretary’s authority to promulgate maximum‑rate schedules for check cashing and money orders and the existing petition/hearing framework to modify them, but adds the explicit cost‑recovery language giving the Department fee authority.For sales finance, consumer installment, debt management, debt settlement, safety deposit, and payday licensing regimes, the bill does two things in parallel: (1) it adds a statutory Fees section giving DFPR rulemaking authority to set and allocate administrative fees; and (2) in the statutes that already authorize examinations it tightens/clarifies the examination duty and ties exam costs to licensees through a schedule that must reasonably reflect actual costs (the Consumer Installment Loan Act explicitly permits travel expense charges for out‑of‑state licensed locations and examination of liquidating former licensees). The net effect is a uniform statutory hook DFPR can use to charge licensees for supervision and to recoup the agency’s operating expenses via administrative rule rather than relying on existing ad hoc fee provisions or General Fund support.Operationally, the bill does not prescribe fee levels, allocation formulas, or caps.
It relies on future rulemaking to design categories, price points, billing cycles, and procedures for apportioning costs among multi‑product or multi‑jurisdictional licensees. Where existing statutes contained discrete fee items (application and license fees, per‑day examiner charges, bond requirements, or rate‑setting petitions), HB5384 layers the broader fee authority on top of those provisions rather than replacing them outright.
The Act takes effect immediately upon becoming law.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill inserts nearly identical "Fees" sections into seven statutes (Currency Exchange Act; Sales Finance Agency Act; Consumer Installment Loan Act; Debt Management Service Act; Debt Settlement Consumer Protection Act; Safety Deposit License Act; Payday Loan Reform Act), authorizing the Secretary/Director to assess administrative costs against regulated entities by rule.
For sales finance agencies and consumer installment licensees the bill makes annual examinations mandatory (language changed to "shall" examine at least once each year) and requires licensees to pay examination expenses according to a Department fee schedule that must reasonably reflect actual costs and may include travel.
The Currency Exchange Act’s statutory mandate that the Secretary "shall at least once in each year" investigate every currency exchange and the statutory annual cost‑review/report requirement are removed; inspection and subpoena powers remain.
Section 16 of the Currency Exchange Act continues to reference per‑examiner day fees set in current text ($250 per day per representative and $150 per day for ambulatory currency exchange exams), meaning some discrete examination fees are still fixed in statute even after the broader fee authority is added.
The existing petition rule for changing currency‑exchange maximum rates remains detailed: a petition cannot be filed until 9 months after the last promulgation and must be joined by at least one‑quarter of all community currency exchange licensees (or ambulatory licensee(s) authorized to serve at least 100 locations) to trigger consideration.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Inspection/subpoena authority remains; some per‑day examiner fees retained
Section 16 keeps the Secretary’s access, subpoena, and oath powers for examinations and preserves the text that fixes a per‑day fee for each qualified representative conducting an examination ($250/day; $150/day for ambulatory exchanges in the existing language). Practically, this means DFPR retains the operational exam toolkit and a statutory floor for some examiner charges even as the bill adds broader fee authority elsewhere.
Removes annual mandated investigation and cost‑review; adds fee recovery authority
Section 19.3 removes the prior statutory direction that the Secretary review annual Currency Exchange Section costs and investigate each licensee at least once per year, and it inserts new language making the expenses of administering the Act chargeable to regulated entities. The Secretary keeps authority to set maximum fee schedules for check cashing and money orders and must still follow the existing petition, hearing, and rate‑setting factors (including a statutory check for disproportionate impact under the Human Rights Act). The practical effect is that the Department gains an explicit billing authority even as a statutory, legislated cadence for annual investigatory reviews is eliminated.
New fee authority plus mandatory annual exams paid by licensee
The bill adds Section 6.2 giving the Secretary rule authority to set categories and amounts of fees to recover licensing, investigation, and examination expenses. It also revises Section 7 to require ("shall") annual examinations to determine compliance and to obligate licensees to pay the Department’s examination expenses under a schedule reflecting the actual costs. The Department therefore has a clear statutory mechanism to invoice licensees for routine supervision and for re‑examinations cited in Section 11.
Preserves application/license fees and net‑worth/bond rules; adds fee authority and clarifies exam cost recovery
Section 2 retains existing application fees, license fees, net worth and bond rules. New Section 2.5 mirrors the uniform fee language authorizing the Secretary to assess administrative costs by rule. Section 10 clarifies that the Director may examine licensees at any time and formalizes that the Director "shall" make an annual compliance examination, may charge a fee that reasonably reflects actual costs, and may include travel expenses for out‑of‑state licensed locations as part of the fee calculation. The statute also expressly authorizes examination of liquidating former licensees and billing for those exams.
Adds standard fee‑recovery authority
This new subsection gives the Secretary the same broad fee‑setting authority for debt management service licensees: licensing, investigations, and exams may be funded by fees assessed against regulated persons in proportions and manners determined by the Secretary and set by rule. The insertion is programmatic rather than technical — it creates statutory authorization for cost recovery that previously may have been less explicit.
Same fee language applied to debt settlement firms
New Section 78 mirrors the fee language used elsewhere: DFPR may assess the expenses of administering the Act against regulated entities and set fee categories and amounts by rule. This brings debt settlement into parity with other consumer‑finance regimes for cost recovery.
Inspection cadence clarified and fee authority extended
The Safety Deposit License Act’s Section 23 wording is revised to require the Director to inspect at least once in each license period (where the prior statutory line left broader discretion), and new Section 23.5 gives DFPR fee authority for administration. The Payday Loan Reform Act receives a parallel new Section 3‑6 authorizing fees. Together these changes standardize the Department’s power to recover the costs of licensing and examinations across these consumer‑facing statutes.
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Explore Finance in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (DFPR) — Gains explicit, statutory authority to recoup licensing, investigation, and examination costs by rule, improving the Department’s ability to fund supervision without annual appropriations.
- State examiners and contractors — A clearer fee‑funding stream increases the likelihood that DFPR will staff and schedule examinations (and pay examiners or contractors) more predictably, supporting sustained oversight capacity.
- Large, diversified licensees — Firms with scale and multiple licenses can absorb and spread new fee burdens more easily than small operators and will likely face fewer liquidity stress issues when DFPR begins invoicing for examinations.
Who Bears the Cost
- Community and ambulatory currency exchanges and small lenders — The bill explicitly permits DFPR to allocate administrative costs by rule; small, thin‑margin operators may bear proportionally larger compliance and examination fees that reduce profitability.
- Payday lenders, debt settlement and debt management companies, sales finance agencies, and consumer installment lenders — These sectors will face new or clarified fee obligations and could see increased per‑examination charges, travel surcharges for out‑of‑state locations, and potential recurring assessments.
- Consumers — Operators are likely to pass some or all additional regulatory costs to customers via higher fees for check cashing, installment loans, or payday products, especially where price‑caps or competitive pressures are limited.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
HB5384 pits two legitimate aims against one another: ensuring DFPR has reliable funding to perform meaningful oversight, versus protecting small, low‑margin providers and their customers from bearing open‑ended regulatory costs; the bill solves the first by granting broad fee authority but leaves the second unresolved because it delegates the critical design choices (allocation formula, caps, exemptions) to future rulemaking without statutory constraints.
The bill centralizes a very broad grant of fee authority in DFPR while leaving core fee design to future rulemakings. That opens immediate implementation questions: how will DFPR allocate fixed overhead across diverse license types, how will it apportion costs among small versus large licensees (flat fees versus usage‑based charges), and what billing cadence and appeals process will be used?
The statutory phrasing — assessing expenses "in such proportions and in such manner as the Secretary/Director deems appropriate" — gives wide discretion but does not mandate transparent cost‑allocation methods, caps, or a nexus test tying fees to actual services provided to particular licensees. Those are precisely the kinds of rulemaking choices that provoke stakeholder challenge and litigation.
Another practical tension flows from the bill’s uneven changes to examination cadence: it removes the legislated annual investigation requirement for currency exchanges while making annual examinations mandatory in other statutes. That creates a patchwork of oversight frequency across industries that serve similar consumers and could produce uneven consumer protections.
Finally, the coexistence of statute‑fixed examination charges in certain places (the $250/$150 per‑day language retained in the Currency Exchange Act) with a new rulemaking fee authority risks internal inconsistency; DFPR will need to reconcile which charges are governed by statute and which are adjustable by rule, and stakeholders may litigate perceived arbitrary allocations or retroactive fee designs.
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