The last time foreign credit expanded that fast was in mid-2008, just before the global crisis. While the trend highlights the easy money that comes in boom times, it should also raise questions about whether investors’ fervor for fast-growing Asia has created a credit bubble.

Banks have been pouring funds into the region, as a vote of confidence in its economic prospects. HSBC grew 22 percent. China and India are beneficiaries, but BIS data showed even more lending went to Australia, South Korea, and Hong Kong. Japan is most indebted, with offshore loans at $1.1 trillion, but tiny Cambodia’s borrowings grew fastest, at 46 percent year-on-year. It is no surprise that rising wealth and creditworthiness have lured lenders eastwards.

Record low interest rates and loose monetary policy in the United States, Europe and Japan has also flooded the world with cheap money. Much of that cash has ended up in Asia, financing governments and asset purchases. It has also fueled corporate growth, through foreign direct investment, trade finance and working capital. Asia’s balance sheet is strong enough to handle the mountain of foreign debt.

The region’s economies survived 2008’s credit crunch largely because leverage levels were low. Having learned from the 1997 Asian crisis, governments have mostly amassed large dollar reserves to protect them from foreign currency shortages if investors turn tail unexpectedly. However, there is no denying that Asia is again vulnerable to a reversal of risk appetite. When credit floods in at rates like these, a mere sign of sovereign crisis in the West, or a property crash in a big economy like China, might cause funds to be pulled out with devastating speed.

Some 41 percent of foreign lending to Asia is of one-year’s duration or less. Even with strong balance sheets and prudent reserve management, a liquidity vacuum would leave many companies, and some governments, looking exposed.