The U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced plans to study the potential effects of forcing big insurance companies to meet tough funding restrictions required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law. The Wall Street oversight law directed regulators to identify big non-bank financial firms that could pose risks to the U.S. financial system. Those companies are regulated by the Fed and must meet capital requirements comparable to those for big U.S. banks. Insurers American International Group and Prudential Financial have already received this designation, and regulators are considering also applying it to MetLife. Those companies and other big insurers argue that bank-style capital requirements, which are limits on debt funding, do not fit their businesses and should be adapted. The Fed on Tuesday said it would study the issue to "better understand how to design a capital framework for insurance holding companies it supervises" under the Dodd-Frank law. "This is a welcome step in the
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