As President Obama signs a landmark deal on legislation to reform Wall Street to prevent another financial crisis like the one we faced nearly two years ago, there is little doubt that this is an important and overdue measure that will help to safeguard the long-term stability of our economy.

As a senior member of the Banking Committee, and as a member of the conference committee on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, I worked hard to craft workable legislation with my colleagues to create a mechanism to monitor systemic risk in the financial sector; to unwind large financial firms without having to bail them out; to regulate risky derivatives, credit-default swaps and other complicated products that were not transparent and unregulated; and to provide consumers with better protections governing the products they use and better information about those products by creating a consumer watchdog, all with an eye toward ensuring continued economic growth and a competitive U.S. financial industry.

While this is a historic moment, and we have passed strong legislation that remakes the financial services landscape in our country, this is in many ways only the beginning of our efforts.

Congress must closely monitor the implementation of this legislation. It will take strong oversight and communication between Congress, the regulators and the administration to create the best outcome for this bill. We must also be on watch to ensure that consumers, small businesses and community banks are not negatively affected.

Also, the legislation allows regulators to write new rules in a variety of areas, from derivatives regulation to capital requirements. During the coming months, the regulators will undertake this task, and it will be critical to hear from all the regulators as they start this process.

As they begin, it is in our best interest to also open a dialogue with our international counterparts. This will only strengthen our efforts on financial reform, international accounting standards, capital requirements and other issues especially as we head toward the next G-20 meeting in Seoul in November.

As we know, the European Union has already moved ahead on insurance and deposit insurance directives, hedge fund and private-equity regulation, and taken steps to restructure the EU's financial services regulatory bodies. As we have all seen since the crisis began, the problems are not isolated within national borders. There must be coordination in this global marketplace.

When we look at the various causes of the crisis-gaps in regulation; rules that applied to some financial companies but not all; the lack of a system to monitor risks across the banking sector; the lack of a system to unwind big financial firms; and large corporations operating with little or no accountability to their shareholders and their customers-it's clear these were not all inadequacies unique to the U.S. Many financial services companies operate globally, and in order for our reforms to work, we will need to coordinate with other countries.

All the rules don't need to be identical, but they should achieve the same goals without creating loopholes that prompt regulatory arbitrage across borders and put the U.S. at a competitive disadvantage.

The kind of freewheeling, self-regulating, anything-goes environment that we had before the crisis is simply not an option, and shouldn't be an option in other countries. The more coordinated the efforts, the better.