St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 11, 2022, Fair housing groups OK First Mid merger with Jefferson Bank
A bank merger between First Mid Bank & Trust and Jefferson Bank could go through after fair housing groups reached an agreement with the banks and changed their tune on the merger, officials said on Tuesday.
The groups — the St. Louis Equal Housing and Community Reinvestment Alliance, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and the Woodstock Institute, a fair lending research nonprofit — wrote letters in October urging the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank to block the merger over concerns the Mattoon, Illinois-based First Mid hadn’t provided enough loans in majority-Black neighborhoods.
The organizations cited “significant redlining concerns and a failure to adequately serve Black individuals and Black communities in multiple markets.” They said Black borrowers got just 1.2% of mortgages made by First Mid in the St. Louis area, far below the 6.8% figure for peer banks. They cited similarly low numbers for First Mid in Champaign, Decatur and Peoria.
