In the following decades, the insurance regulators of the 48 (and eventually 50) states followed a similar path. State insurance regulators established minimum capital requirements that were geared to the ratings on the bonds in which the insurance companies invested—the ratings, of course, coming from the same small group of rating agencies. Once again, an important set of regulators had delegated their safety decisions to the credit rating agencies. In the 1970s, federal pension regulators pursued a similar The Securities and Exchange Commission crystallized the centrality of the three rating agencies in 1975, when it decided to modify its minimum capital requirements for broker-dealers, who include major investment.
