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FDIC Federal Register Citations Community
Bank & Trust Re: RIN Number 3064-AC50: FDIC Proposed Increase in the Threshold for the Small Bank CRA Streamlined Examination Dear Sir or Madam: I am Executive Vice P'resident and Cashier of Community Bank and Trust, located in Waco, Texas, a central Texas community of over 100,000 residents. My bank is $270,000,000 in assets and is already subject to large bank CRA exam. I am writing to strongly support the FDIC's proposal to raise the threshold for the streamlined small bank CRA examination to $1 billion without regard to the size of the bank's holding company. This would greatly relieve the regulatory burden imposed on many small banks such as my own under the current regulation, which are required to meet the standards imposed on the nation's largest $1 trillion banks. I understand that this is not an exemption from CRA and that my bank would still have to help meet the credit needs of its entire community and be evaluated by my regulator. I strongly oppose making the Community Development criterion a separate test from the bank's overall CRA evaluation. For a community bank, CD lending is not significantly different from the provision of credit to the entire community. The current small bank test considers the institution's overall lending in its community. The addition of a category of CD lending (and services to aid lending and investments as a substitute for lending) fits well within the concept of serving the whole community. A separate test would create an additional CD obligation and regulatory burden that would erode the benefit of the streamlined exam. In conclusion, I believe that the FDIC has proposed a major improvement
in the CRA regulations, one that much more closely aligns the regulations
with the Community Reinvestment Act itself, and I urge the FDIC to adopt
its proposal, with the recommendations above. Thank you for your consideration
of my opinion.
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| Last Updated 11/22/2004 | regs@fdic.gov | |