(Bloomberg) -- US bank regulators are easing Obama-era rules that curbed leveraged lending amid rapid growth in the private credit industry and complaints by bankers that they’re being sidelined by too much regulation.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a statement on Friday that the 2013 guidance was “overly restrictive” and “overly broad.” The move resulted in a significant drop in leveraged lending market share by regulated banks and pushed much of that lending to nonbanks, the regulators said.

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“The agencies expect banks to manage leveraged lending exposures consistent with general principles for safe and sound lending,” the OCC and FDIC said.

The Trump administration has vowed to ease or remove banking rules put in place in the years following the 2008 banking crisis. So far, the effort has included easing some capital requirements, giving banks more say in the Federal Reserve’s annual stress tests and telling bank examiners to focus on empirical matters instead of less tangible threats such as reputational risks.

The OCC, FDIC and Federal Reserve initially issued the original guidance to combat weakening standards as issuance of the debt grew. Since then, banking heavyweights such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon have groused for years about how regulated the banking industry has become compared with peers in the private markets.

At the other end of the spectrum, Jeffrey Gundlach, DoubleLine Capital’s chief executive, blasted private credit last month as allowing for “garbage lending“ that could precipitate a financial crisis.

The impact of pushing the riskiest debt deals beyond the regulated markets is starting to show. In recent weeks, Blue Owl Capital Inc. called off a merger of two of its private-credit funds and BlackRock Inc. marked to zero the value of private debt it had extended to a home improvement company.

There are also concerns about stretched valuations, spread compression, and aggressive competition from both their peers in leverage finance as well as other private credit lenders.

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