WASHINGTON, June 6 (Reuters) - U.S banking regulators are warily eyeing concentrations of commercial real estate loans and worry some institutions may not be preparing for risks associated with such loans, Federal Reserve Governor Susan Bies said on Tuesday.
"Some institutions' strategic- and capital-planning processes may not adequately acknowledge the risks from their CRE concentrations," Bies said in a speech to a bankers' group in Coronado, Calif.
Bies did not discuss interest rates or the broad economic outlook in a text of her speech distributed in Washington.
However, she did caution that commercial real estate lending has recently occurred under "fairly benign" credit conditions that are unlikely to continue indefinitely.
Bies said there has been some slippage of bank underwriting standards.
Bank regulators have proposed tighter standards for managing risk linked to commercial real estate lending to address such concerns, Bies said.
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