I have an assessment area for each of my offices. Am I required to have one for a Loan Production Office. From what I have read, I can if I want to, but it's not required.

A loan production office is not a branch office and no AA is required. Only licensed deposit taking branch offices and stand alone deposit taking ATM's need to be included in an assessment area.

There are other things to consider however like the number of loans the LPO may be originating outside your existing AA's The majority of loans MUST be originated inside a banks AA.

Padric,

You say you have an Assessment Area for each of your offices. I would suggest that you keep your Assessment Areas to the minimum because you have to monitor your performance in each area. So multiple AA's multiply your work to stay on top of your CRA performance. As long as the tracts are contiguous and don't overlap substantially from one MSA to another, you would be better off with fewer Assessment Areas all things being equal.

As Don points out, you are not required to include strictly LPO locations in any Assessment Area, but you have to be aware that it is very important to have the majority of your lending inside your AA's.