Financial services policy watchers are expecting President Donald Trump to nominate Hester Peirce to fill an open seat on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
If Peirce joins the SEC, she could increase the agency's overall level of interest in insurance regulation.
Peirce is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, an arm of George Mason University, and director of the center's financial markets working group.
Before Peirce began working for the Mercatus Center, she worked on the staff of Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. She worked on the committee staff while the administration of former President Barack Obama was implementing the Dodd-Frank Act.
She also has worked as a staff attorney at the SEC.
Peirce has a bachelor's degree in economics from Case Western Reserve University and a law degree from Yale.
In March 2015, Peirce discussed her views on U.S. insurance regulation in "Insurance Regulation in the Dodd Frank Era." The Indiana State University business school posted a copy of the paper on the web when she appeared at an insurance public policy conference there.
Peirce suggests in the paper that, even though insurers might start out hating the idea of being designated as a "systemically important financial institution" under the Dodd-Frank Act, they might eventually end up using being officially too big to fail as a marketing tool.
SIFI status could be especially helpful to issuers of life and annuity products, Peirce writes.
Life insurers' "long-term viability matters greatly to policyholders," Peirce writes. "Designated insurers are likely to highlight their status as a reason consumers should select them over their competitors."
