President Obama met with top financial regulators Monday and later praised their efforts to protect consumers, make the financial system safer and stronger, and prevent the recklessness that led to the economic collapse at the outset of his presidency.

The session in the Roosevelt Room at the White House was designed to rebut critics who say the financial reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank has been bogged down in lengthy rule-making processes where big banks are able to delay or water down key provisions including those on swaps, executive compensation, limits on the size of commodity positions, and conflicts of interest at firms that effectively bet against their clients.

The president has also come under fire from Democratic presidential hopeful Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has called for breaking up the biggest banks, prosecuting top executives, and restoring the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act that divided traditional and investment banking.

Other proposals have come from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis president Neel Kashkari, who last month called for breaking up the nation’s biggest banks and who said “now is the right time for Congress to consider going further than Dodd-Frank with bold, transformational solutions.’’

“As we work to recover from this crisis, we’ve also worked to prevent this crisis from happening again. The laws that we’ve passed have worked,’’ Obama said to reporters at the end of the meeting. Flanked by Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen and Richard Cordray, head of the Consumer Protection Bureau, Obama said, “It is popular in the media and political discourse both on the left and on the right to suggest that the crisis happened and nothing changed. That is not true.’’

But many critics of financial reform say that while some things have happened — notably increased capital requirements at major banks — many other changes are languishing.

“On the one hand, I think objectively a lot has been done,’’ said Dennis Kelleher, chief executive of Better Markets, a liberal-leaning nonprofit group. But, he said, ‘‘what we have is a bunch of rules tied up at the agencies by a war of attrition by Wall Street and its lobbyists.’’

“There are a bunch of areas where not all the Dodd-Frank rules have been implemented, and that’s incredibly important,’’ said Lisa Donner, executive director of Americans for Financial Reform, a liberal coalition of community, consumer, labor, and other groups.

Obama acknowledged that work remains on shadow banking, executive compensation, and cybersecurity.

But he said if there has been a holdup in issuing regulations, it is the fault of lawmakers.