According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, a slight quirk in the text of Dodd-Frank may make life easier for some of the biggest U.S. insurers.

They argue the Federal Reserve should look to state-insurance rules to craft capital requirements for insurers designated as systemically important financial institutions. That task is complicated by the fact that state rules rely heavily on third-party credit ratings, while the Dodd-Frank Act ordered all federal regulators to strip ratings from their rules.

In this case, the devil is very much in the Dodd-Frank details. The language of the financial-overhaul law doesn't actually contain a prohibition on rules relying on credit ratings. Rather, one section, 939A, instructed federal agencies to do three things.