How And Why CRA Reform Proposals Must Improve Access To Credit And Capital For Small Businesses November 2022 Download Report Josh Silver, Senior Fellow In late spring of 2022, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) proposed the most far-reaching changes to …
“Significant changes will be required if the final rule is to deliver real progress in addressing the legacy of redlining in America.”
Recorded August 2, 2022 Listen to our conversation with key financial regulators on proposed Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) reform. We dig into the potential areas for reform, and how these impact your communities. For more information and sample comment letters, visit our #TreasureCRA page. Speakers: Eric Belsky, Director, Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, Board of Governors of …
The OCC has proposed yet another data collection effort to develop thresholds for its flawed 2020 Community Reinvestment Act final rule. This is another tacit admission by the OCC that all along it has lacked the data and factual basis for developing its flawed revisions to CRA examination performance measures. Instead of creating more consistency …
Initial NCRC Analysis of OCC Proposal to Establish Thresholds for its New CRA Measures Read More »
In anticipation of the reform proposals to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) expected this week, I am continuing the review of performance measures on CRA exams. The most recent blog looked at performance measures on the lending test. This one will scrutinize performance measures on the investment and service test.
“We are already seeing an unusual level of discord among the regulators,” said Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a fair-lending advocacy group. “I think there is a significant risk that the whole effort will backfire, unless a more careful and consensus-driven approach is taken.”
A group of 487 civil rights, fair lending, community, and consumer rights organizations today submitted to bank regulators a set of recommendations for strengthening the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a law designed to stop discrimination in mortgage and small business lending.
In 1977, Congress enacted the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and required federal bank agencies to assess the record of banks in meeting needs for credit and banking services in communities in which banks are chartered. The federal bank agencies responded by creating CRA examinations that assessed banks’ performance in geographical areas containing bank branches and …
The importance of CRA assessment areas and bank branches Read More »
A newly revealed suggestion to revamp a basic concept in the Community Reinvestment Act could undermine long-standing attempts to minimize redlining and improve needed investment in minority and low-income communities.
Many of Treasury’s recommendations for modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act would help financial institutions, not low-income communities.
Let’s discuss the specifics of what modernization could look like, since the Treasury report chose not to.
Critics argue that Community Reinvestment Act standards need to be more transparent, but creating more objective measures would require regulators to favor some types of loans over other
Fair-lending enforcement would not happen in earnest until years after the Fair Housing Act, not until the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 required financial institutions go on record about what they considered their market area. The law intentionally created a conundrum for any institution that was redlining: How could it accept deposits from customers to whom it was unwilling to lend?
Bank regulators have not even proposed a plan yet for overhauling the Community Reinvestment Act, but stakeholders likely to weigh in on the plan are already establishing battle lines.
Here’s what the Treasury Department’s changes would do, and wouldn’t, toward solving four major problems we have outlined in our investigation.
