Credit unions are easing their lending standards and loading up on long-term loans and bonds in a quest to boost their profits in a low-interest-rate environment.

But that strategy puts credit unions at risk of substantial losses if interest rates rise, The Wall Street Journal explains.

Analysts told the paper that credit unions may not be aware of the danger, because they emerged relatively unscathed from the housing bust.

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Regulators are worried.

"I am concerned that the message [about rates] is either not getting through, or it's getting through, and they are just choosing not to do anything about it," Debbie Matz, chairman of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the industry's regulator, told The Journal.

Credit unions' net holdings of long-term assets hit a record high 35.85 percent of their total assets as of Dec. 31, according to the NCUA.

The problem is that if interest rates rise, credit unions' bond holdings will fall in value. And while the loans they already made will be stuck at low interest rates, the rates they pay for deposits will rise.

That's a dangerous combination.

Meanwhile, big banks have suffered from falling interest rates—falling bond yields to be precise.

That's because the banks made a bad bet that yields would increase this year.

Instead the 10-year Treasury yield has dropped to 2.58 percent around mid-day Friday from 3.04 percent Dec. 31.

Early last month, JPMorgan Chase advised that its trading revenue will likely drop 20 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, The New York Times reports. Citigroup has issued a similar warning.

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