CRA Modernization Goes Back to the Drawing Board

Bankers value certainty and consistency when it comes to regulation, but the Community Reinvestment Act currently offers neither. In May 2020, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a controversial revision of the decades-old law. The rewrite stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy not just because of the changes themselves — some of which were long overdue and well received — but because the agency acted on its own after it was unable to reach an agreement with the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The OCC’s decision was also significant because national banks account...