Today, 516 state and national community-based organizations urged the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) Board of Directors to not join the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) notice of proposed rulemaking (NPR) for the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).
In a letter written and submitted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), the coalition of housing, consumer protection and community development organizations referred to the OCC’s approach as “flawed” and asked the FDIC to be more involved in bringing all three CRA regulatory agencies together for a unified approach. The Federal Reserve has made it clear that it will not be involved in this NPR.
“For almost its entire 40-year history, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has resulted in interagency consensus among the prudential regulators. We are very concerned that OCC’s regulatory framework, and specifically its’ insistence on a dollar volume metric, expanding what is CRA qualifying and other changes that could dilute the power of the law for low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities, has fractured the consensus among prudential regulators on how best to implement a law so vital to lending, investments and financial services, including bank branches, in LMI communities.”
“At this stage in the rulemaking process, we would urge the FDIC Board to play a more constructive and instrumental role in bringing the regulators together around a unified approach…The FDIC should not join a flawed OCC-led approach that will weaken CRA obligations for the nation’s largest financial institutions. We urge the FDIC Board not to join the notice of proposed rulemaking at this time, and wait until the public has an opportunity to fully vet the OCC’s framework.”
The groups are also calling on the OCC to elongate the comment period from 60 days to at least 120 days due to the complexity of the regulatory changes as well as having much of the comment period fall during the holiday season.
View the list of signers, read the full letter:
https://ncrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/NCRC-CRA-Sign-on-12.11.19-Final-opt-out-version2.pdf
To request an interview with NCRC CEO Jesse Van Tol, contact:
Alyssa Wiltse-Ahmad
202.393.8309
media@ncrc.org
