Wall Street may be fretting before Tuesday's release of long-awaited regulations on implementing the Volcker rule, but the impact isn't likely to be huge, a banking expert said.
"I don't think, whatever happens, the impact is going to be huge. Most of the large consequences have already filtered through to most of major Wall Street players," said Keith Pogson, a managing partner at EY for financial services, told CNBC.
"This year, we're seeing an emergence of political and social influences that are driving financial services just as much as anything else. The big banks will really have to comply," he said.
(Read more: R ule that curbs bank risk-taking nears approval )
After years of consultations, mostly behind closed doors, U.S. regulators on Tuesday will release the final version of regulations to implement the Volcker rule, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law aimed at reforming the Wall Street practices which led to the global financial crisis.
The Volcker rule would force banks to curb proprietary trading and limit investments in hedge funds and private equity funds and is named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
Three of the five bodies responsible for the regulations - the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission - have all scheduled public meetings to vote on the rules Tuesday. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency don't plan public meetings; the SEC's five commissioners will be voting on paper ballots and will release the results Tuesday.
(Read more: Wall Street frets as Volcker Rule nears vote )
The financial industry largely opposes the rules, citing a hit to profits and concerns that curtailing proprietary trading will limit their ability to effectively hedge market risks; legal challenges to the regulations are considered likely.
"It's a really blurry line," said Pogson. "When are you holding a position to be a market maker? When are you holding a position as a hedge? It's very difficult to say. It's going to be a never-ending story in terms of justifying this," he said.
Once the regulations are released, "we're going to have this legal frenzy as the lawyers go through, work out what it means. Then we'll see if they want to challenge it," Pogson said.
But he added, "now as compared to before 2007, before the financial crisis, I think the regulatory mindset and the market mindset is really different." He expects the bigger players won't try to make a major end-run to seek legal loopholes.