The International Organization of Securities Commissions, or IOSCO, Friday said it is mulling expanding the scope of regulation following the financial crisis, including whether to more directly oversee investment products.

"We're giving consideration to the perimeter of regulation...to emerging risks within or outside that perimeter," IOSCO technical committee chairperson Kathleen Casey said, referring to systemic risks that could arise. Casey is also the commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The statement, echoed by other IOSCO functionaries and made during the closing press conference of an IOSCO meeting here, signal a far feistier tone on the part of financial regulators globally. Public opinion favors tighter financial regulation after many investors lost vast sums in the financial crisis, with most banks still cautioning against the potentially harmful effects of regulation on competition.

"Much mischief occurred in areas exempt from regulation, so we're looking now at OTCs [over-the-counter financial products], credit ratings agencies and hedge funds, and those areas link back to investor confidence," Jane Diplock, IOSCO executive committee chairperson, said. Diplock is also chairman of New Zealand's Securities Commission.

This past summer, IOSCO began a push for hedge funds worldwide to be registered with regulators and to disclose information aimed at identifying and quantifying how much risk they pose to the financial system.

Earlier Friday at the IOSCO gathering, regulators in Europe and the U.S. pledged to attempt to coordinate supervision of credit-ratings agencies such as Standard & Poor's Corp., Moody's Corp. (MCO) and Fitch Ratings, which have been blamed by some critics for exacerbating the financial crisis after giving overly positive ratings to certain kinds of debt, including some backed by subprime mortgages.

Body Web site: http://www.iosco.org

-By Katharina Bart, Dow Jones Newswires; +41 43 443 8043; katharina.bart@dowjones.com