The two agencies that regulate most of the nation's banks want to rewrite how they enforce the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1977 law that requires banks to meet the credit needs of the communities where they take deposits. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (Docket OCC-2026-0694, RIN 1557-AF57) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (RIN 3064-AG31) published a joint proposed rule in the Aug. 12 Federal Register, with comments due Oct. 13, 2026 [1].
The agencies describe the aim as a return to basics. The proposal seeks to "refocus on the statutory objective of encouraging banks to meet the credit needs of their communities; to better ensure that community development grants reach the communities they are intended to benefit; to reduce unnecessary burden, particularly for community banks; and to provide greater clarity for how to obtain CRA consideration" [1].
The most consequential change is quiet: the dollar lines that sort banks into exam categories move sharply upward. Under the proposal a small bank is one with less than $1 billion in assets, up from roughly $412 million, and a large bank is one above $10 billion, up from roughly $1.649 billion [1]. A new intermediate category covers banks between $1 billion and $10 billion [1]. Raising those ceilings shifts many institutions into lighter-touch review.
Exams also get narrower. Rather than grade a bank across all four retail lending categories, home mortgage, small business, small farm, and consumer, examiners would evaluate only a bank's two largest "major product lines" [1]. For community-development grants made by large banks, the proposal sets a "15 percent cap on the indirect costs that recipients could incur" when administering the money, which the agencies say keeps more of each grant in the target community [1].
Two further changes cut paperwork. Banks under $10 billion in assets would face reduced data-reporting requirements, and any bank could satisfy its public-file obligations through its website rather than keeping paper copies on hand [1].
The direction is consistent, and so is the tension inside it. Every element that lightens the load on banks, higher thresholds, fewer graded lending lines, less reporting, is also a loosening of the machinery that the 1977 law built to steer credit into low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. Whether "less burden" and "more credit where it is needed" can travel together is the question the comment period, open until Oct. 13, is there to test [1].
