The Federal Reserve on Wednesday moved to simplify capital rules, a long-expected change that banks have been pushing for — and one that sharply divided central bank officials.

The Fed has been in the process of overhauling its approach to capital rules for nearly two years. From the outset, the changes sought to combine capital requirements determined by stress tests — hypothetical exercises that check on how much money a bank would need on hand to keep lending and manage losses in times of financial stress — and a separate set of requirements.

The idea was to make capital rules for banks, cobbled together in the aftermath of the financial crisis, less redundant and more straightforward.

But banks pushed back on the Fed’s initial proposal for the combined standard, which the Fed calls the stress capital buffer — asking for an even more streamlined approach. Randal K. Quarles, the central bank’s vice chair for supervision and regulation, laid out a set of changes in 2019 that responded to those concerns.