(Bloomberg) -- Three US regulators took an initial step toward imposing long-delayed rules that would force lenders to claw back some pay from executives who take on too much risk. 

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency proposed mandatory clawbacks for certain incentive-based pay for bank executives. The Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission and National Credit Union Administration must also propose and finalize the plans for them to become effective. 

The plan goes further than a 2016 version that would have left clawbacks to the discretion of the banks. The industry resisted that effort and an earlier one in 2011. The rules are mandated under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed to prevent some of the excesses that led to the 2008 financial crisis. 

“The proposal, along with proposed alternatives and questions in the preamble, seeks to align employee incentives with the long-term interests and safety and soundness of covered financial institutions,” FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in a statement on Monday. 

Last year’s banking turmoil, which felled several regional lenders, reignited debate about holding executives accountable for bad decisions. In the proposal, the agencies also pointed to flawed incentive-based compensation practices at Wells Fargo in the last decade that contributed to misconduct that “resulted in harm to customers and fines, penalties and enormous reputation damage to the financial institution.”

Read more: Banker Bonus Clawbacks Are Poised for Vote, With Outcome Murky

The proposed rules are meant to curb risky behavior by forcing executives and other prominent employees to wait longer to cash out their vested bonuses until the results of their decisions are clear. 

Under Monday’s plan, senior executives at big banks would have to defer a minimum amount of their incentive-based compensation for a set period of time. Some executives at large lenders could have between 40% and 60% of that pay delayed for periods of as long as four years, according to Gruenberg. 

The agencies also proposed broadening who could be affected by a clawback. 

The industry was quick to criticize the plan, with the Bank Policy Institute calling the effort “purely political.” BPI President Greg Baer said it “is inconsistent with the statute they purport to be implementing, and an attempt to govern how financial services sector employees are paid.”

But this is a mandate from Congress, and the final rule is long overdue, said Todd Phillips, a former FDIC attorney who is now a law professor on financial regulation at Georgia State University.

He applauded the agencies that announced the proposal Monday but said he was disappointed that the Fed and SEC didn’t join. 

--With assistance from Lydia Beyoud.

(Updates with background starting in sixth paragraph.)

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