Dear John,

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is a landmark civil rights law passed in 1977 to end discrimination and address the redlining that is pervasive in our banking and housing systems. Despite these efforts, discrimination in lending is still a problem. Now, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency have released an inter-agency proposed rule that has the potential to help remedy this.

While the CRA requires banks to serve the credit needs of communities where they take deposits, including low- and moderate-income communities, it currently does not explicitly include evaluation of lending and banking activity by race and ethnicity. The CRA is critical to making wealth building more accessible by creating access to homeownership, banking services, and capital for small businesses and it is time for regulators to incorporate an explicit focus on race. We've drafted a comment letter to the agencies to request that the proposed rule require banks to gather and report disaggregated racial and demographic data as part of the CRA exams, and we invite your organization to sign on.

Take a moment to view our letter and add your organization as we ask the inter-agencies to include a robust consideration of race in evaluating our financial institutions. The deadline to sign on is Thursday, August 4 at 12 pm ET. Please only sign on if you are authorized to act on behalf of your organization.

Add Your Organization to Our Comment Letter

Together, we can make sure BIPOC communities have access to financial services and homeownership opportunities that can help build wealth and prosperity.

For additional questions about this rule, please contact me at [email protected].   

Thank you for everything you do,

Alejandra Montoya-Boyer
Director of Policy
Prosperity Now