Congress changed hands. The rules that govern collections and servicing didn't.

If you work in collections or servicing, you have probably had some version of this conversation since the election.

Someone on the leadership team asks what it means for us. Someone else has already read three takes. A third person wants to know if the roadmap needs to change.

Here is our view. The rules didn't change, and changing them takes time. What can change is who is asking questions, and how often. The teams that will be fine are the ones that can show, clearly and on demand, what they told their customers.

Changing a law is still hard

Control of Congress is changing, and the new terms begin on January 3. Committee leadership gets decided in January, and committees choose which topics get hearings, which witnesses get invited and which issues get attention.

What did not change is how laws change. A bill has to pass both chambers and be signed by the president. Overriding a veto takes a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate. That is a high bar for any rewrite of consumer finance law, no matter who is in charge.

Meanwhile, the rules collections and servicing teams follow every day are already on the books:

• Fair Debt Collection Practices Act: federal law since 1977

• Telephone Consumer Protection Act: federal law since 1991

• Dodd-Frank's ban on unfair, deceptive or abusive practices: federal law since 2010

• Regulation F: the CFPB's rule on how collectors communicate, in effect since 2021

The rules aren't only enforced from Washington

None of those laws depend on who holds the gavel. Consumers can sue directly under both the FDCPA and the TCPA. State attorneys general can enforce federal consumer financial protection law, and many states have their own collection rules on top of it.

That is why we have never thought of compliance as something that rises and falls with an election. The obligations stay put. What moves is how much attention they get, and from whom.

What may change is who is asking

Oversight runs on a calendar. By law, the CFPB director reports to Congress twice a year. The Senate Banking Committee reviews nominees. Committees can invite regulators and industry to testify on whatever they think matters most.

There are early signs of what might matter. Analysts at Evercore ISI told CNBC they expect affordability to be a focus in the new Congress. We are not in the business of predicting politics, but if affordability does become a theme, it is easy to picture what lenders and servicers could be asked:

• What do customers complain about most, and why?

• How many hardship plans did you offer, and how many did customers keep?

• What fees did people pay while they were in hardship?

• On the calls themselves, what was said, and when?

Almost every one of those comes back to the same thing: what did you actually tell your customers?

For a lot of teams, that is surprisingly hard to answer. Conversations are spread across call recordings nobody has time to review, agent notes written from memory, a texting platform, an email tool and a complaints queue. The information exists. Pulling it together into an answer you would stand behind is another matter. That gap is not a political problem. It is an operational one, and it was there before the election.

If you advise banks and lenders, this is where readiness work pays off. Not in guessing which bill moves first, but in making sure your clients can show how they treated the people they serve.

Why we care about this at Domu

Compliance first is one of Domu's core tenets.

Regardless of who is asking the questions, a clear record of every conversation matters most.

Whether it is a regulator, a committee, a state attorney general or the customer themselves, the answer starts in the same place. On Domu, every conversation leaves that record: what was said, when, and which rules applied. When a rule changes, your compliance team approves the update, and you can see what changed and when it took effect.

This is our perspective for teams in banking and consumer finance, not legal or political advice.

Sources: U.S. Constitution, Art. I, Sec. 7 and Amend. XX; 15 U.S.C. 1692 and 1692k; 47 U.S.C. 227; 12 U.S.C. 5531, 5496 and 5552; 12 CFR Part 1006; CNBC, "Midterm elections could jolt stocks as Democrats look poised to sweep Congress," Nov. 3, 2026.