About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

GGD-94-79R 1 (1994-01-26)

handle is hein.gao/gaobackma0001 and id is 1 raw text is: 



GAO          United States
             General Accounting Office
             Washington, D.C. 20548

             General Government Division

             B-256266


             January  26, 1994

             The Honorable Henry B. Gonzalez
             Chairman, Committee on Banking,
                Finance and Urban Affairs
              House of Representatives

              The Honorable Joseph P. Kennedy II
              Chairman, Subcommittee on
                Consumer Credit and Insurance
              Committee on Banking, Finance
                and Urban Affairs
              House of Representatives

              This letter responds to your request for our analysis of
              the proposed Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)
              regulations, which the bank and thrift regulators
              recently released for public comment. We began a review
              of CRA and the related fair lending laws last May at your
              request. Our review is still under way and includes
              visiting about 40 banks and thrifts across the country to
              assess CRA from the perspectives of the industry,
              regulators, and community groups.

              The bank and thrift regulatory agencies deserve credit
              for their concerted efforts to obtain input from all
              affected parties prior to formulating their CRA proposal
              and for attempting to address some of the major
              criticisms of the current regulations within the short
              time afforded them by the President. The major change in
              the proposed regulations is the focus on assessing
              institutions' performance in lending, investing, and
              servicing their communities, particularly the low- and
              moderate-income segments, rather than the current focus
              of assessing institutions' efforts in helping to meet
              community needs. The proposed regulations also provide a
              streamlined assessment option for small institutions and
              an option for institutions to be assessed based on a
              preapproved CRA strategic plan.

              It is not clear, however, whether the proposed
              regulations' shift to performance-based assessment
              standards will achieve the desired goals of improving
              performance and promoting consistency while minimizing
              compliance burdens. Moreover, such a significant


GAO/GGD-94-79R, Community Reinvestment Act

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most