Non-bank financial companies are one step closer to finding out whether federal regulators will classify them as systemically important financial institutions.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council, as mandated by Dodd-Frank, issued a final rule and interpretive guidance on April 3 describing the criteria that the FSOC intends to apply for determining which firms may be "Systemically Important Financial Institutions" (SIFIs, the fancy acronym for too big to fail) and pose a potential risk to the financial system.

The final rule is largely unchanged from the proposed rules. The proposed rules require financial institutions deemed systemically important—generally those with $50 billion or more in assets—to lay out their resolution plans (nicknamed “living wills”), detailing how their sudden failure would affect the other financial institutions they do business with.

The final rule establishes a three-step screening process for determining whether a non-bank should be subject to regulation by the Federal Reserve Board. Under that process, the FSOC will use additional data to identify a subset of non-bank financial companies.  Such data includes: size; interconnectedness; substitutability; leverage; liquidity risk and maturity mismatch; and existing regulatory scrutiny.

The FSOC may consider any non-bank financial company for a determination if it may pose a threat to U.S. financial stability, "irrespective of whether such company meets the thresholds," the proposal stated.