Five of the country’s biggest banks detailed tweaks to their business models in hopes of persuading regulators they could absorb significant financial distress without requiring taxpayer funds to stay afloat.

The stakes are high for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of AmericaCorp., and three others. If regulators deem these revisions of their so-called living wills—made public by the government Tuesday—to be insufficiently credible, those institutions could be ordered to hold higher levels of capital on their books, or to restructure and shed business lines.

Regulators are facing considerable pressure from politicians to use this process to break up the biggest banks, with many—notably Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren—arguing these institutions remain “too big to fail.”

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