I was wondering how many of you CRA officers are also lenders at your institutions. I guess I'm curious about how your system works. Do you specialize in only CD loans? Do you go through the traditional avenues of loan approval (i.e., loan committee)? Do you only lend in the region you're located in, or all across your AA?

I can certainly see the benefit of a CRA officer also being a lender. It could make things more efficient on CD loans and designate someone to specifically seek these kinds of loans out. I want to do some research on it and find out exactly how other institutions are doing this to see if it might be a good fit for ours. If anyone has anything they would like to share, I would be all ears. It's very intriguing and seems to make sense to me.

Thank you!

I am the CRA officer, but not a lender.

Compliance/CRA Officer - have been at 3 institutions ranging from $700MM to $2.3B in size.

I've been the CRA Officer at 4 different banks ranging in asset size from 250k to 4 billion.
$250k institution - Marketing Officer / CRA Officer - Reported to the president
$750k institution - Training Officer / CRA Officer (currently) - reported to Human Resources, but to the President for CRA
$2 billion institution - CRA Officer - reported to the President
$3.5 billion institution - Community Development Officer / CRA Officer - reported to the Marketing Department

In my case, it didn't really matter what my "primary" role was. I happen to be somewhat of a cheerleader for the Community Reinvestment Act and so the responsibility for CRA tends to migrate to me. The larger banks where I worked wanted to have someone who would be involved with CRA on a full time basis. That included coordinating community activities, grant applications, marketing initiatives, reporting etc.

I've been a CRA Officer at 4 different banks from $200 million in assets to $2 billion currently. I've never been a lender, I'm much more of a cheerleader.

I have worked in banks from $5 billion, to $3 trillion and back down to $200 billion. Never known anyone in CRA or community development to have lending authority.

I work for a $1.2 billion bank as CRA officer and chief residential loan officer. Have been CRA officer since I started here.

I'm CRA and Product Development as part of Marketing Department ($900 million). In my humble opinion one of the keys to a successful CRA exam is being able to tell your story...and who better to do that than a marketing person? :-)

WBL, you are asking a loaded question, depending on the size and complexity of the bank, and the assessment area.

CRA is many things, like referenced above. While it is lending, it is also outreach, planning, investments and marketing. You could have a great lender with a horrible personality - they would not be a good CRA officer. The bank could also have a great marketing person who has no concept of loans or investments (if you could remember the show WKRP in Cincinnati - think Herb Tarlick) with the same outcome. Someone great with numbers and write-ups may have no concept of lending outreach or investments.

Depending on the size of the bank, it may be a department processing the information, with one designated spokesperson. You have been given a lot of great ideas here - unfortunately, it's something that needs to be tailor made for the bank, and the market.