Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) activity and discussions regarding how regulations promote lending, investment, and services took center stage during Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting’s tour of New York neighborhoods.
More than 50 community advocates, community development professionals, civil rights organizations and bankers joined Otting and senior staff from the agency on the third tour this summer of CRA neighborhoods and CRA modernization discussion.
“Here in New York, we saw great examples of community and bank partnerships to conduct CRA activity that helps meet important needs of underserved neighborhoods,” Otting said following the tour. “We also discussed challenges communities, advocates, and bankers face in lending, investing, and providing services that can be addressed in part by modernizing CRA regulations.”
During the tour, Otting outlined how CRA regulations could be improved in four ways: clarifying what counts for CRA credit, updating where activity qualifies, making evaluations of bank CRA performance more objective, and reporting results in a more timely and transparent manner.
“I thank everyone who has participated on this and other tours for sharing their stories, ideas, and frustrations,” Otting said. “I am encouraged by this discussion and the half dozen others we have had this summer with hundreds of stakeholders about CRA. The conversations confirm broad support for making CRA work better for everyone, for clarifying what activity counts for CRA, updating where it counts, evaluating CRA performance in a more transparent way, and making reporting more timely and transparent.”