The growth of China's yuan-denominated lending lost steam in December, as banks started to worry about credit risk amid an economic slowdown.

New yuan loans slipped to nearly 598 billion yuan ($90.8 billion) in December, down from 709 billion yuan in November and less than the market's expectation of 700 billion yuan, the People's Bank of China said on Friday.

For the whole year, however, the country's financial sector has issued 11.7 trillion yuan in new loans, even higher than the 9.59 trillion yuan in 2009 after the global financial crisis.