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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01jh343w357
Title: The Community Reinvestment Act and geography: How well do CRA exams cover the geographical areas that banks serve?
Contributors: National Community Reinvestment Coalition
Keywords: United States—Community Reinvestment Act of 1977
Federal aid to community development—United States
Community development—Law and legislation—United States
Discrimination in banking—United States
Issue Date: Apr-2017
Publisher: National Community Reinvestment Coalition
Place of Publication: Washington, D.C.
Description: Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) as a means of requiring banks to serve the communities in which they are chartered to do business. When CRA was enacted in 1977, banks financed their loans from deposits. They made loans locally to the populations served by their branches. Today, the connection between lending, deposit-taking, and branches remains in many cases, but some notable banks have severed it. Lending is also financed by so-called secondary market institutions including Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and private sector investors. Therefore, banks are not as dependent on deposits as a source of financing and can make loans more easily in geographical areas where they do not have branches. In order to assess the impact of assessment area procedures on CRA exams, NCRC examined the exams of the largest 100 banks, by asset size, in the country. This sample is not scientific or random but it is likely nonetheless to be revealing in terms of scrutinizing the impacts of exam procedure on exam rigor. While the focus is on geographical areas, the study will also look at treatment of affiliates and summarize other attributes of the exams of the largest banks in the country.
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01jh343w357
Related resource: https://ncrc.org/the-community-reinvestment-act-and-geography/
Appears in Collections:Monographic reports and papers (Publicly Accessible)

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