On May 5, 2022, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (collectively the agencies) issued a joint notice of proposed rulemaking (the Proposed CRA Rule) that proposes changes to the way the agencies evaluate a bank’s performance under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The team at Bradley is conducting an in-depth review of the Proposed CRA Rule and expects to release a detailed blog post on the significant number of proposed changes to the CRA regulations in the coming days. Below are highlights of a few of the changes the agencies seek to make through the Proposed CRA Rule.

If implemented as written, the Proposed CRA Rule would:

• Update the CRA evaluation framework, with performance standards tailored to a bank’s size and business model
• Create four new performance tests to evaluate large bank CRA performance: the Retail Lending Test, Retail Services and Products Test, Community Development Financing Test, and Community Development Services Test
• Establish specific performance tests for small and intermediate-sized banks
• Update the requirements for the delineation of assessment areas
• Create updated record-keeping, data collection, reporting, and disclosure requirements for large banks

These highlights are only a partial selection of the changes proposed by the agencies. Stay tuned for a more expansive description of the details of the Proposed CRA Rule. To ensure that you are notified of new developments, you can subscribe here to be notified when new blog posts are released.

The agencies are accepting comments on the Proposed CRA Rule through August 5, 2022. If your organization is considering submitting a public comment on the proposed changes to the CRA regulations, we suggest that you begin reviewing the Proposed CRA Rule soon.