This week marks the fourth anniversary of the most wide-sweeping financial reform since the Great Depression (known as Dodd-Frank). To avoid another 2008 would be great, but at this date and rate, astonishingly, only half the provisions have been implemented. Is financial reform in its dying days? Are we safer?

Despite regulators being overwhelmed by a complex and convoluted global financial system, and underfunded with resources to dispatch some fairly daunting duties, some important protections are in place to avoid another economic recession or depression. Many rules now exist to oversee previously unregulated “dark markets” with zero, zippity, nada supervision. Policies and procedures have been established to avoid systemically important institutions (like large banks) from failing and causing a colossal collapse.

However, unfinished work remains. These are global markets, interconnected like never before. What happens in New York or Chicago impacts London, Shanghai, Sydney, Singapore or Sao Paulo . and vice versa. In financial markets today, we are the world. What that means is just because the U.S. has implemented some of the laws (albeit delayed and some diminished in strength), others around the world need to step up to the plate and do so as well.

If the U.S. were the only nation with new financial rules, some firms might choose to move business to less regulated nations — perhaps those with thinner rule books. Such market migration wouldn’t be good for the U.S. However, others are now moving forward with their own financial reforms. The questions are: Will all regulators get it right, and when?

If financial regulations are developed in the U.S. and the European Union (together comprising roughly 70 of financial markets), the rest of the world will follow. That will take a few years. It will require industry input to ensure regulators act in a balanced fashion. Ultimately, what may appear today to be regulatory reforms’ dying days will come to a close and we will, in fact, be better protected.

Former Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Bart Chilton is a senior policy advisor at the global law firm DLA Piper LLP.