The rise and rise of “business development companies”: In the yield-hungry US investment climate, the private loan is booming, with business development companies (BDCs) seeing substantial growth since they first emerged in the ‘90s. Their assets have more than doubled over the past five year, with some 90 BDCs sitting atop USD 97 bn worth of assets, according to Bloomberg. Growth has been spurred on by attractive yields that go well beyond the typical 3% yield from bond funds, with some paying out dividend yields as high as 10%.

What are BDCs, anyway? BDCs are essentially portfolios of loans made to companies, similar to closed-end mutual funds or real estate investment trusts, that are usually traded as stocks. They cut out the middlemen that are banks — many of whom have been pulling back on loans — by lending out funds directly from pension funds, endowments, hedge funds, and the like, who have plenty of money to spare.

The big dogs are all getting in: Private equity heavyweights such as Blackstone, Wells Fargo, Carlyle Group, and KKR are all forming BDCs and doing more direct lending.

The catch? It could create the same fertile grounds that brought about the financial crisis, according to some analysts. Since the Trump administration came to power, underwriting standards in general are weakening as money floods in and more loans are made. Furthermore, Congress has raised the threshold for BDCs to borrow to make more loans, possibly incentivizing them to make riskier loans. Some rating agencies have been placing blanket downgrades on the industry. Players in the industry, however, argue that access to bigger funds will allow them to make larger loans to bigger companies that are able to pay the loans back. Most beneficiaries of BDC loans have been mid-cap to smaller companies.