Federal consumer watchdog loses power over insurance companies
S. 2419 — Business of Insurance Regulatory Reform Act of 2025 · Filed by Tim Scott (R-SC) · 5 cosponsors · Introduced Jul 23, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill narrows the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) authority over insurance companies and insurance-regulated entities. It prohibits the CFPB from enforcing consumer financial protection rules against state-regulated insurers when they are engaged in the business of insurance, and requires any CFPB enforcement authority over such entities to be interpreted narrowly. The bill shifts regulatory primacy to state insurance regulators.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a narrow carve-out from federal consumer protection enforcement, shifting regulatory authority from the CFPB to state insurance regulators. This is a classic deregulation-by-jurisdictional-shift, not a transparency or procedural reform despite the title's framing as 'clarification.'
What the text implies
- State insurance regulators vary widely in consumer-protection aggressiveness and resources; this creates a patchwork where consumers in weak-enforcement states lose federal backstop entirely.
- Insurance companies offering financial products (e.g., annuities, credit insurance, payment products) escape CFPB oversight for those products when classified as 'business of insurance,' even if those products compete with non-insurance financial services subject to CFPB rules.
- The 'narrowly construed' language in subsection (B)(ii) may allow insurers to argue that even enumerated consumer laws (those explicitly transferred to CFPB) apply only minimally to insurance-regulated entities, creating a second layer of exemption.
- Rule of construction (subsection 4) explicitly privileges state insurance regulator authority over CFPB authority in interpretation disputes, cementing the shift even in ambiguous cases.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Consumers lose federal CFPB oversight of insurance-related financial products and services, relying instead on state insurance regulators who have historically been less aggressive on consumer protection and have fragmented, inconsistent standards across states. The CFPB was created specifically to fill gaps in consumer protection; this bill reopens those gaps for a major financial sector.
Who stands to gain
- insurance companies
- insurance holding companies
- state-regulated insurers offering financial products
Named in the bill
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), State insurance regulators, Insurance companies, Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, Section 1027(f)
Where it stands
5 cosponsors: 5 Republicans.
- Jul 23, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 23, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
4 lobbying clients named this bill on 8 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $5,215,837 in lobbying spend. A filing names 36 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 72% of bills with at least one filing.
Tim Scott, the sponsor, reported $214,300 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- American Council of Life Insurers — $4,085,837 on 3 filings
- Pacific Life Insurance Company — $480,000 on 1 filing
- Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America — $410,000 on 2 filings
- Cmfg Life Insurance Company — $240,000 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,440 characters) on Jun 8, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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