Prudential’s ‘too-big-to-fail’ days might be numbered

Prudential Financial Inc. could shed the too-big-to-fail label that the U.S. government slapped on it after the 2008 financial crisis as soon as this week, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council has been considering freeing the Newark, N.J., insurer from heightened oversight for months.

A vote on the matter might come Tuesday, when the panel is scheduled to meet in Washington, said the person who asked not to be named because a decision hadn’t yet been announced.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council, whose members include the leaders of the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission, designated Prudential as a nonbank systemically important financial institution in 2013.

It’s the only nonbank that still carries the label after regulators freed insurers American International Group Inc. and MetLife Inc., as well as General Electric Co.’s financial unit, from the designation in recent years.

The agenda for the council’s meeting this week says members plan “an update on the annual reevaluation of the designation of a nonbank financial company.”

A Treasury spokeswomen didn’t immediately return a request for comment, while a Prudential spokeswoman declined to comment.

Prudential has been laying the groundwork to escape the too-big-to-fail tag. It was helped by a shift in the political climate with the election of President Donald Trump, who announced a review of DoddFrank rules months after taking office.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council was created by the Dodd-Frank law to better monitor the financial system and help prevent another crisis.

General Electric worked to shed billions in lending assets to help drop the “systemically important financial institution” tag, which was lifted in 2016.

MetLife won a court challenge against the council that year, a decision that the Trump administration declined to appeal.

AIG, which was at the center of the last crisis and received a $182.3 billion government bailout, was freed of the tag last year.