The Federal Reserve and other Wall Street regulators are considering changes to leverage limits and accounting rules as they look for ways to free up bank capital in response to the coronavirus crisis, according to three people familiar with the talks.

One easily achievable option would be to further delay the impact of a recent accounting rule change for “current expected credit losses,” or CECL. The agencies are discussing what can be done with CECL to ease pressure on banks, including a likely lengthening of its phase-in period, said the people, who requested anonymity because no decisions have yet been announced.

The bank regulators also have been weighing changes to leverage limits -- a key constraint on Wall Street -- the people said. Even minor adjustments to those limits can have profound effects on the capital planning for megabanks such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Spokespeople for the Fed and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency declined to comment. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Any further revisions to core banking rules would come on top of a series of moves the regulators have already made. The Fed said Tuesday that it would restart a crisis-era program to help U.S. companies borrow through the commercial paper market. And regulators also issued a rule meant to encourage banks to extend credit to crisis-hit companies and consumers, easing the fear that lenders could face sudden, severe curtailing of their dividends and stock buybacks.

Lobbying Campaign

Long before the virus spread to the U.S., the banking industry had mounted a vociferous lobbying campaign to upend CECL. Its fruits were on display in January during a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing where lawmakers railed against the rule.

“We have heard banks of all sizes -- and let me underscore all sizes of banks -- outline the implications this new accounting standard will have on very popular consumer products especially during economic downturns,” Representative Ann Wagner, a Missouri Republican, said at the hearing.

Wagner and other Republicans took turns blasting Financial Accounting Standards Board Chairman Russell Golden, who was testifying before the panel. She said Golden should feel “compelled” to study the matter further and consider its potential impact “for real people and for the institutions.”

Under longstanding accounting rules, banks recognize loan losses only when they are certain that loans and securities are going sour. The new CECL method, devised in 2016, would require banks to take a partial hit when they issue the loan to account for the risk that every loan has a chance of going bad.

Leverage Ratio

As the agencies discuss bank leverage, the industry has already waited two years for them to finish overhauling a rule governing lenders’ ability to rely on borrowed money. The Fed and OCC proposed a new approach to calculating the leverage ratio -- a measure of a bank’s capital against its assets -- but it has languished. More recently, the Fed moved to erase a leverage measure from its annual stress tests.

While the banking-industry watchdogs weigh other industry-relief options, they’re in regular contact with industry executives, the people said.

Though Wall Street chief executives recently assured President Donald Trump they’d help American consumers and businesses cope with the economic fallout from the virus’s spread, the industry has been making clear some of its own wants.

Bank of America Global Research suggested in a Tuesday note that “a temporary emergency easing of various regulations would be necessary to ease the flow of credit and avoid unnecessary financial stress in the context of the ongoing pandemic. We do not think such easing would constitute any threat to bank balance sheet strength or in any way reduce their defensiveness.”

The note said regulators have been weighing a relaxed approach for setting the banking giants’ minimum capital “surcharges” -- an additional buffer that accounts for their scale and complexity.