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Banker Resource Center

Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)

The CRA encourages financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, and requires that a financial institution’s record in helping meet the credit needs of its entire community be evaluated periodically. A financial institution’s performance evaluation is also considered when reviewing applications for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions.

Laws and Regulations

Key laws and regulations that pertain to FDIC-supervised institutions; note that other laws and regulations also may apply.

  • Part 345 — Community Reinvestment provides CRA requirements related to records, reporting, and disclosures as well as the standards for assessing performance
  • CRA Sunshine Act provides the address where parties should mail copies of covered agreements and access to the interagency final rule which implements the CRA Sunshine Requirements

Supervisory Resources

Frequently asked questions, advisories, statements of policy, and other information issued by the FDIC alone, or on an interagency basis, provided to address consumer protection issues.

Other Resources

Supplemental information related to consumer protection issues.

  • Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) is a formal interagency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions. The CRA section of the FFIEC’s website contains collective information and data for institutions that are subject to the CRA’s requirements
    • Community Reinvestment Act provides information about CRA, how to file CRA data, and public data
    • Annual CRA Asset-Size Threshold Adjustments for Small and Intermediate Small Institutions includes current and historical CRA asset-size thresholds and examples of implementation
    • CRA National Aggregate Reports provides electronic access to CRA national aggregate reports produced from composite information submitted to the FFIEC
    • Geocoding System helps financial institutions meet their legal requirement to report information on mortgage, business, and farm loan applications and provides census demographic information about a particular census tract, including income, population, and housing data
    • Distressed and Underserved Tracts provides regulatory background information and annual determinations of distressed or underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies for multiple years
    • CRA Rating Search allows users to find the latest CRA ratings of financial institutions supervised by the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC, and/or the former Office of Thrift Supervision
  • Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and includes data that may assist banks in identifying and qualifying community development activities
    • Federal Registry of Disasters allows users to search disaster declarations by state and tribal governments by year to assist in identifying and qualifying community development activities
  • Affordable Mortgage Lending Center is a resource for community banks to help them compare a variety of current affordable mortgage programs and to identify the next steps if they seek to expand or initiate affordable mortgage lending

Videos/Webcasts/Teleconferences

Informational videos and recordings of archived webcasts and teleconferences