Weill: Everybody is shooting at the banks, but this hopefully stops soon

Regulators have been tightening up the financials sector , but former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill told CNBC that he hopes this changes when a new president is elected.

"Everybody is shooting at the banks," he said in an interview with "Closing Bell." "Hopefully that ends when the campaigns end, because the banking system is really, incredibly important to the vibrance and the future of our economy."

The former executive contends that the American bank system has mobilized "over a billion people from abject poverty to the middle class."

The expert's comments come as Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been advocating for breaking up the big banks.

Weill said that big financial institutions should only be broken up if "the regulators really don't let them do the job that they are capable of doing and should be doing, to create vibrant capital markets." He added on Tuesday that the Dodd-Frank Act is very complicated and should be simplified.

"I think that we can write rules to regulate the banks and protect the banks from having problems with 10 different rules on one piece of paper, rather than 1,200 pages of Dodd-Frank," he said. "I don't know anybody that's read the whole thing."

Conversely, Richard Ketchum, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's chairman and CEO recently told CNBC that the goals of Dodd-Frank are the right goals . Ketchum's comments came as some market watchers contended that the law, which places major regulations on the financial industry, was too onerous on the banks, as five major banks failed the living will test.

Weill's former employer, Citigroup, was one of the institutions that passed the test.

"I'm proud of what Citigroup is doing now; I think the company has made great progress," Weill said. "I think it's terrific, not that they're the only one, but that they are the only one that passed the living will test, so I think they've showed that they know how to handle this situation."

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