Insurance regulators have denied the life insurance industry’s request to ease rules specifying how much cash they must set aside to absorb potential losses and pay claims, the Associated Press reported.

The rejection came after shares of several top life insurers, including Principal Financial Group Inc., jumped more than 20 percent Wednesday following an advisory vote by a panel of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The panel had supported variations of six of the nine industry proposals, and urged three others be rejected.

But the insurers’ shares reversed course Thursday as the NAIC’s executive committee turned down the request in a vote held via teleconference. The industry group American Council of Life Insurers wanted the commissioners to adopt a national set of rules to replace state-by-state regulations that the industry calls too strict.

“So far the insurance industry is in much better condition than most of the rest of the financial services sector because of strong state solvency regulations,” the NAIC’s president, New Hampshire Insurance Commissioner Roger Sevigny, said in a statement.

“Simply put, the industry has not made a credible case for why we need to make changes on an emergency basis, and why those changes should be limited to the specific proposals made by the industry.”

Susan Voss, Iowa’s insurance commissioner and the NAIC’s vice president, said any further consideration of changes to regulatory requirements “will follow the NAIC’s open, transparent and deliberative process.”

The industry pushed for the changes at a time when many other regulations are being tightened in response to problems plaguing the financial industry, including segments of the insurance industry.

The industry group says its members are holding far more cash than needed to absorb losses and make good on clients’ claims. Life insurers maintain that the capital requirements are so strict that they can make it appear to investors and potential customers that their finances are far less sound than they actually are.

The insurers’ stock prices declined Thursday after the vote.