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The final version of federal bank regulators’ latest attempt to bring the nation’s anti-redlining rules into the 21st century has been revealed after the Federal Reserve Board of Governors voted Tuesday to issue a final rule revamping its Community Reinvestment Act regulations.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are expected to follow suit.

“The final rule will better achieve the purposes of the law by encouraging banks to expand access to credit, investment, and banking services in low- and moderate-income communities; adapting to changes in the banking industry, such as mobile and online banking; providing greater clarity and consistency in the application of the CRA regulations; and tailoring to bank size and type,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a statement.

The updates to regulations implementing the landmark 1977 law are meant to take into account the dramatic rise in online lending and mobile banking that’s taken place at banks in the last 15 years. A previous attempt at reform in the waning days of the Trump administration collapsed amid accusations that the then-head of the OCC was favoring former colleagues int he banking industry. CRA regulations were last updated in 1995.

The new rule tests the largest banks – those with $2 billion in assets or more – on four areas: retail lending, retail services and products, community development financing and community development services.

So-called “intermediate banks” with assets between $600 million and $2 billion only face the new retail lending test and the current community development test, but may opt into the new community development financing test.

The smallest banks will only face the existing retail lending test, but can opt into the new version if they want, while limited purpose banks will only face the new community development financing test.

Banking groups and community development advocates have been at odds over elements of the three regulators’ draft proposal, released last year, with industry figures saying that the threshold for “large banks” was being set too low, and that banks which did little lending outside their immediate branch network were being swept up in efforts to police those that loaned money far and wide.

The new regulations echoed some of those criticisms – simplifying some of the tests, exempting banks that do most of their lending locally from the retail lending test and increasing thresholds for how many loans would trigger a retail lending test – and added an additional year for banks to implement the rule. The final rules would still assess about half of the nation’s $2 billion-plus-asset banks’ community investment and lending efforts on areas outside of their branch network where they are doing significant amounts of business, the Federal Reserve said.

But the changes didn’t win over every skeptic.

“[T]he final rule is unnecessarily complex, overly prescriptive, and contains disproportionately greater costs than benefits, adding significantly greater regulatory burden for all banks, but especially for community banks,” Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said in a statement explaining why she did not vote for the new rules.

The American Bankers Association, the industry group for the nation’s largest banks, said it was still evaluating the new rules based on its members’ feedback and whether it adds more burdens to the largest banks also subject to the Basel III requirements to increase capital reserves later this decade.

“The test for a CRA modernization rule is whether it incentivizes investment in underserved communities with requirements that are transparent, promote consistency and align with Congressional intent,” it said in a statement Tuesday.

The National Housing Coalition, a politically broad group of affordable housing industry members, applauded the rule, with President and CEO David Dworkin declaring in a statement that bank regulators “got it right” and praised the new rule’s elements that clarify what investments qualify banks for a boost under the CRA – something the current regulations have been criticized for lacking.

“I haven’t been into a physical bank branch in years, but I visit my bank’s app on my mobile phone every week to make deposits or withdrawals” Dworkin said. “The original statute in 1977 doesn’t require that branches be constructed out of bricks and steel. Branches today are often constructed out of ‘0s and 1s’ instead but serve the same purpose. My app is my branch, and the final regulation acknowledges this transformation, aligning the CRA with the 21st century.”

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a group more aligned with community groups and community development nonprofits, also praised the rule, but criticized it for not explicitly considering the racial impacts of banks’ lending and other investments, noting that the law was specifically created to end racist practices at banks.

“Black, Native American and immigrant communities were intentionally and systematically starved of capital for decades,” NCRC President and CEO Jesse Van Tol said in a statement. “It is a deep disappointment that these new final rules still fail to make the racial wealth equity goals of the law explicit, even as the agencies appear to have made great strides in fixing a broken system that permitted blatantly discriminatory banks to receive ‘Outstanding’ grades for atrocious performance.”

Federal Bank Regulators Release CRA Updates

by James Sanna time to read: 3 min
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