October 2026

October 14, 2026, Houston Style Magazine, Fifth Third Bank Announces $3.1 Billion Texas Community Investment Commitment The initiative will extend Fifth Third’s Neighborhood Program to Houston and Dallas, bringing place-based community and economic development investments to underserved communities. Rather than applying a uniform strategy across all markets, the bank plans to work with local communities

October 14, 2026, Money, America’s Best Banks Are Competing for Customers. That’s Good News for Your Money In-person banking is experiencing a revival, with about 110 new brick-and-mortar branches opening between October 2025 and June 2026, according to an analysis of FDIC data by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. That trend is growing. JPMorgan Chase

October 14, 2026, DBusiness, Fifth Third Commits $7.6B in Michigan to Drive Community Impact, Economic Mobility The priorities came out of Community Listening Sessions held last winter across Fifth Third’s new and expanded markets, including in Detroit and Grand Rapids. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition facilitated the sessions, which brought Fifth Third and Comerica leaders

October 13, 2026, The Real Deal, Trump administration threatens rural housing investment Jesse Van Tol, president and chief executive officer of the National CommunityReinvestment Coalition, estimated that $87 billion annually in communitydevelopment could be at risk, including the building and preservation ofaffordable housing.The Federal Reserve has not come out in support of the proposed rule

October 12, 2026, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Proposed banking rule change threatens city and small town lending, advocates warn Proposals put forward earlier this year by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) would enable banks to ease CRA targets by at least two-thirds, advocates

October 12, 2026, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Community Reinvestment Act helps working-class Philadelphians. Here’s how you can help save it. According to the National Community Revitalization Coalition, in the Philadelphia metro area from 2010-2024, banks made more than $64 billion in CRA-qualified mortgage lending to low- and moderate-income borrowers or in low- and moderate-income communities,

October 12, 2026, Bloomberg, Trump-Backed Housing Rule Could Undercut Effort to Lower Costs “The OCC and FDIC should listen to communities, housing providers and lenders during this comment period and abandon changes that would make our housing crisis harder to solve,” said Jesse Van Tol, president and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

October 9, 2026, Realty Today, Bank Branches Claim Manhattan Storefronts, Driving Prime Retail Availability to a Nine-Year Low The activity in Manhattan fits inside a broader national reversal. After roughly a decade of steady contraction — the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimates that bank branches per American fell roughly 28% from their 2009