The OCC is seeking public comment on how to reform CRA, are any of you sending comments in? Would you like to share your responses?

This is what I posted for comment: https://www.regulations.gov/contentStrea...contentType=pdf

Well done, Michael. A great example of how you can keep a comment letter simple by listing their questions in your own letter and writing on what you know.


This is one of the main talking points I am going to focus on in my letter. When you consistently read performance evaluations from all of the different regulators, it is clear (to me) that all regulators are not created equal. This inconsistency creates a competitive advantage for some, and puts others at a disadvantage.

Indeed that is a good point about the competitive advantage. I stress often when I argue for CRA that the regulation was created for encouragement of banks, not the derailment of banks. Moreover, there are quite a few regulators at the FDIC, and FRB level who believe that financial education should not be weighted as heavily in evaluating a banks performance while the OCC gives a pretty heavy weight towards those activities. It is arguable that the true purpose of the service test is for financial education more than any other opportunity under said test.

Moreover, there needs to be more oversight for bias within the organizations if they decide to examine independently going forward. I'd argue that just as CRA professionals should utilize second level reviews for validation--so too should a regulator utilize their colleagues for reviews. I recently automated our performance context, or rather made it so that our performance evaluation (self evaluation + performance context) is always live, and ready to be pulled at anytime. And out of that process I discovered that I could infer when a different regulator is drafting our PE by changes in verbiage, data used, and even the presentation of data. As far as I can tell regulators are just stitching together their pieces; which I hope doesn't mean they aren't collaborating in methodology.