The Federal Reserve voiced concerns over whether banks can withstand an eventual increase in interest rates after a long, low-interest-rate environment, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. 

A panel of federal regulators charged with observing market risk met on Thursday and warned that a sudden surge in interest rates could have a destabilizing effect on financial markets, the WSJ said.

The Fed’s chairman, Ben Bernanke, sits on the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Using detailed data that the central bank started collecting after the financial crisis, Fed officials are regularly running big banks’ portfolio holdings through models to gauge their exposure to various changes in interest rates, according to Fed officials.