see how you made my kitty smile
So do you have a CRA officer? Sounds like the two of you should get together. I see so many banks where decisions like this are made by others with no consult on how it's going to effect CRA. Fortunatley my bank keeps me in the loop when it makes major changes so I'm always ready to develop a performance context to protect our rating.
No bank should change their focus in an effort to make regulators on CRA happy IF their focus is not seen as detrimental to their community. I'm a small business bank, and I could probably be a bigger consumer focused bank if I was in the mood which could really boost our CRA, but we've got many great consumer institutions surrounding us, so if we did make that change, sure CRA might do well but our profits would suffer, and eventually we'd fold. CRA focus has to be safe and sound, and if this change in your focus means your inside/outside ratio suffers, well so be it. You shouldn't completely neglect your focus to deal with that one little ratio. (breathing a sigh of relief?) BUT! now the hard work come in. You do need to consider coming up with a strong performance context to protect you in the next exam.
This is the job of your CRA officer. Since you've cleared up my mind and told me that isn't your duty, you need to chat with them and be sure they're on line with these changes and working on that context as we speak (or type)
As I mentioned, pull those exams and see how you stack up against them. Check out your lending figures within your AA and outside of your AA and see how you look in the LMI
markets. There are many institutions to compare yourself against out there. They face this same delima, and while they do live through it, they probably have to spend more time than the average joe making sure the rest of their data looks strong at exam time. I see one or two of you at the PCI conference in CRA essentials every year wondering how to "fix" the inside/outside ratio
So take heart in the knowledge that you're not alone
Schedule that meeting with the CRA folks right away and share your concerns and willingness to work with them on this issue and I think you'll find you can protect the bank from a bad exam. Now I caution that with...if your major focus is high income lending products, and you have squat for LMI deals inside or outside...you might consider learning to feel comfortable with the words "needs to improve"
or you might JUMP!!! right on the band wagon and figure out a way, product, focus, etc., to pull those LMI figures up to protect you!