"Supervisory independence is something all relevant entities should be thinking about – we certainly think about it at the GAO," Lawrance Evans, the GAO's director of financial markets and community investment, told CU Times. "To provide Congress with a full appreciation of the potential for regulatory capture in financial sector regulation we have included all the prudential depository intuition regulators in our scope at this time – the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC and the NCUA."

One advocate of increased regulation said regulatory capture among financial regulators is a reality.

"It's a serious problem," Bart Naylor, financial policy advocate at Public Citizen, said.

The most obvious benefit, he noted, is the promise of a job after a regulator completes their term, he said.

"The revolving door pays well," Naylor said. "You play the game right, you get a job."

In a draft of their national party platform, Democrats embraced some of Public Citizen's ideas. They said they will ban golden parachutes for financial services officials who accept jobs as regulators.

Democrats also said they will require bank and corporate regulators to recuse themselves from official work that would benefit their former employers, and ban financial services regulators from lobbying their former employers for at least two years.

When asked about the investigation, NCUA Public Affairs Specialist John Fairbanks said, "We look forward to working with the GAO on its review."

But as one might expect, some folks in the credit union community immediately came to the NCUA's defense.

"I do not believe that regulatory capture has been a problem at the NCUA," Marvin Umholtz, president/CEO of Umholtz Strategic Planning & Consulting Services in Olympia, Wash., said. "If anything, since the corporate credit union crisis and the passage of the punitive Dodd-Frank Act, the NCUA has spread around way too much tough love to be accused of regulatory capture. I would be the first in line to heap lots of criticisms on the NCUA board's actions in recent years, but regulatory capture is not on that list."

In March, the GAO said it was investigating whether the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was being too lax in supervising banks that fall under its oversight. That probe came as a result of a request from House Financial Services Committee Ranking Democrat Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), the ranking Democrat on the panel's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.

That same month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said the regulatory process was biased in favor of the industries being regulated.

Some of the allegations were the result of a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former employee of the New York Fed. That employee released secretly-recorded conversations between New York Fed employees that were interpreted as showing that the agency was too lax in supervising Goldman Sachs.

While no specific allegations of regulatory capture were leveled at the time the GAO probe was announced, the idea has been raised in the past.

For instance, former NCUA Chairman Debbie Matz addressed the issue when she said she opposed legislation that would require the NCUA to hold public hearings on its budget.

At the time, NCUA Board Member J. Mark McWatters replied that public budget hearings would not result in the agency being captured by those it regulates.

New NCUA Chairman Rick Metsger announced last month that the agency will hold a briefing on its budget in October.