WASHINGTON—Trump-appointed financial regulators set out to ease the Volcker rule—a controversial postcrisis restriction for banks—and instead have drawn the industry’s ire.

Last week, lawyers representing JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and six other banks met with the Federal Reserve to complain about the recent proposal to revise the regulation designed to curb risky trading by banks, people familiar with the matter said. The banks said the proposal, dubbed Volcker 2.0 by financial regulators, could complicate compliance and hamper trading in asset classes not currently covered by the rule.

“I can’t imagine this aspect of the proposal being preferable to the original and current Volcker 1.0 regime," said Gregg Rozansky, a senior vice president at the Bank Policy Institute, an industry trade group representing the nation’s largest banks. “It could raise prices for student loans, credit cards or auto loans,” he added.

The Volcker rule bars banks from speculative trading with bank-owned funds, but allows firms to buy and sell securities to promote liquid markets and meet customer demands. The rule, a response by Democrats to the financial crisis, was put in place in 2013 after years of negotiations among five regulators in charge of its implementation.

The government’s proposal—put together by the Fed, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission—seeks to make it easier for banks to conduct allowable trades by replacing a standard for determining suspect trades, among other changes.