American Banker, August 8, 2022, Banks hint at legal challenges to CRA rewrite
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition asks that the CRA explicitly consider bank activity by race or ethnicity — a request that would be legally tricky. The bank regulators’ proposal sidesteps this issue by calling for large banks to disclose the racial and ethnic background of their borrowers, a move that they hope will provide more transparency to the public about what groups are getting access to credit.
“As important as these proposed changes are, they fall far short of the measures needed to remedy the persisting legacy of discrimination in the areas covered by the CRA,” the coalition said in its comment letter. “Ongoing disparities and patterns of discrimination continue, against a backdrop of systemic racism that has plagued our nation for centuries.”
The reinvestment coalition also requests that regulators crack down on bank-fintech partnerships in their CRA exams: “We ask the agencies to expand upon their proposal to include partnerships with banks and nonbanks for retail lending. When a bank partners with more than one non-bank, the lending of all the non-banks needs to be totaled together for calculating if the threshold is exceeded for purposes of creating assessment areas.”
