US officials are ramping up scrutiny of the booming $1.8 trillion private credit sector as worries grow about market stress and possible spillover effects on the financial system.
The Federal Reserve is gathering detailed exposure data from big US banks, while the Treasury Department is independently examining how much insurance companies are tied to private credit, Bloomberg reported Friday.
After the 2008 global financial crisis pushed banks to pull back from riskier middle-market loans, asset managers stepped in. Blackstone, Blue Owl, KKR, and Apollo built large portfolios of direct loans to businesses, funded not by bank deposits but by investor capital.
The industry has roughly doubled in size over the last several years, hitting $1.8 trillion in size, which puts it in the neighborhood of the entire US high-yield bond market. It is projected to reach around $3.5 trillion by 2031.
Redemptions and locked gates
Private credit funds faced over $20 billion in withdrawal requests in Q1 from wealthy investors, according to the Financial Times.
Around half of the withdrawals have been fulfilled and the remaining investors are facing delays due to fund limits.
The main risk in private credit is that funds lend to highly indebted, private equity-backed companies that may struggle to repay, especially amid AI disruption and slowing growth.
At the same time, investors can request withdrawals even though the underlying loans are illiquid, creating pressure if many try to exit at once. This mismatch, combined with more reactive retail investors, raises the risk of defaults, forced sales and declining confidence.
Washington is engaged in a regulatory “tug-of-war” over how to help banks compete more aggressively with non-bank lenders without recreating the systemic risks seen in 2008.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon suggests that the private credit market alone does not pose a systemic risk to the financial system. The $1.8 trillion sector is still relatively small compared with larger credit markets like investment-grade bonds and mortgages, as noted in his letter to shareholders.
However, Dimon warns that when the credit cycle turns, losses across leveraged lending could be larger than expected due to weakening underwriting standards, including looser covenants, aggressive assumptions, and opaque valuation practices. He also flags that limited transparency in private markets could amplify stress during downturns.
