Proposed Notice Released on Revisions to Community Reinvestment Act Regulations

BROADCAST EMAIL – Regulatory Update

As you will recall from CARH’s December 16, 2019, Broadcast Email, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation jointly announced that they would soon publish in the Federal Register a notice to revise the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was published on January 9^th, and a Request for Public Input was published today that asks for bank specific data and information that will be used to supplement currently-available data as the agencies consider changes to current CRA regulations.  

According to a statement released by the two agencies, the banking industry has changed dramatically since the law’s enactment in 1977. Since major changes to the regulation were last made in 1995, FDIC and OCC agree that the current CRA framework has not kept pace with such changes, which can adversely affect the very communities CRA was intended to protect. The two agencies’ statements to on to say that the proposed rule would strengthen the CRA regulations by (1) clarifying which activities qualify for CRA credit; (2) updating where activities count for CRA credit; (3) creating a more transparent and objective method for measuring CRA performance; and (4) providing for more transparent, consistent, and timely CRA-related data collection, recordkeeping, and reporting. Publication of the proposed rule has been anticipated due to concerns that changes to CRA could decrease the footprint of banks in the affordable housing arena, particularly investment in Housing Credits.

CARH will be review the published documents and provide comments by the deadline of March 9^th for the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and March 10^th for the Request for Public Input. If you have any comments or concerns that you would like CARH to consider including in our final comments, please forward them to carh@carh.org no later than February 15, 2020. The proposed changes will also be discussed during CARH’s 2020 Midyear Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.