Discover Financial Services said its fiscal fourth-quarter profit fell 19 percent as the rate of bad loans increased.

Shares of the credit card lender fell $1.03, or 6.3 percent, to $15.39 in morning trading. The stock has ranged from $4.73 to $17.35 over the past year.

Discover’s provision for loan losses, or the amount it sets aside to cover bad loans, was $989 million, down from $1.11 billion in the same quarter a year ago but up from $924.4 million in the second quarter.

The company was one of hundreds of banks that received government assistance during the financial crisis. Unlike many large financial companies, however, Discover has yet to pay back the government. Earlier this week, Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc. announced stock offerings to raise the cash needed to repay the bailout loans.

Increasingly worried about the health of mid-sized regional banks with less than $100 billion in assets, the Federal Reserve is working on an expansive review of the commercial real estate loan portfolios of these banks, with expectations that large losses in this asset category could still be coming, according to people familiar with the central bank.

As part of the examination, some banks are being asked to perform a commercial real estate analysis of their assets, according to one banking attorney who said a client of his has been asked to conduct such a review.