Donald Trump won a second term in the White House Tuesday, Republicans took back control of the Senate, and Republicans appeared to be on track to hold on control of the House.
How could that affect the companies that write life insurance and annuities, the clients that use the products, and the financial professionals who help clients choose and manage the products?
Here are five possibilities.
1. The federal judges in the U.S. District courts in Texas may become key financial services policy gatekeepers.
President Joe Biden's administration has adopted regulations intended to protect consumers from bad financial advice and bad financial services products.
Companies and financial services professionals who oppose the regulations have usually managed to block implementation of the regulations by filing suits in the federal courts in Texas. The judges at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have usually upheld the rulings of the judges in Texas.
The judges in Texas tend to be warm to Republican perspectives.
With Trump returning to the White House, one quick rule of thumb for predicting what rules or interpretations will prevail may be to ask, "What will those judges in Texas think?"
2. The U.S. Labor Department is unlikely to impose any major new fiduciary obligations on agents or advisors who help clients roll assets from retirement accounts into annuities.
Trump let an Obama-era Labor Department fiduciary rule die in court during his first term in office.
When Biden became president and his Labor Department officials revived a more focused version of the fiduciary rule effort, opponents used lawsuits filed in the federal courts in Texas and Florida to block it. A Texas court judge agreed to delay implementation.
The new Trump administration seems likely to repeat the strategy from the first Trump term and let the new fiduciary rule effort die in court.
But some Republicans have also emphasized their interest in fighting financial fraud.
In Montana, for example, the state's auditor is also the state's insurance commissioner. James Brown, a lawyer, won an election for the auditor post Tuesday by promising to protect businesses against red tape. But he also promised to "safeguard Montana seniors from financial abuse."
Many states have just started implementing new annuity sales standards based on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's Regulation Best Interest.
Reg BI does not require an annuity seller to put a client's interests first but does require the annuity seller to provide more disclosures and make sure that an annuity purchase is really in the client's interest.
