Agencies release list of distressed or underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies

ARLINGTON, VA (July 12, 2024) — Federal bank regulatory agencies today released the 2024 list of distressed or underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies where certain bank activities are eligible for Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) credit.

Under the CRA, the agencies assess a bank’s record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations. The list released by the agencies includes distressed or underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies where revitalization or stabilization activities are eligible to receive CRA consideration. The designations reflect local economic conditions, including unemployment, poverty, and population changes. Previous years’ lists and criteria for designating these areas are available here

Revitalization or stabilization activities in these geographies are eligible to receive CRA consideration under the community development definition for 12 months after publication of the current list. As with past lists, the agencies apply a one-year lag period for geographies that were included in 2023 but are no longer designated as distressed or underserved in the current list.

About FFIEC

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) was established on March 10, 1979, pursuant to title X of the Financial Institutions Regulatory and Interest Rate Control Act of 1978 (FIRA), Public Law 95-630. In 1989, title XI of the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) established The Appraisal Subcommittee (ASC) within the Examination Council. The Council is a formal interagency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and to make recommendations to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions. To encourage the application of uniform examination principles and standards by the state and federal supervisory authorities, the Council established, in accordance with the requirement of the statute, the State Liaison Committee composed of five representatives of state supervisory agencies. In accordance with the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006, a representative state regulator was added as a voting member of the Council in October 2006. The Council is responsible for developing uniform reporting systems for federally supervised financial institutions, their holding companies, and the nonfinancial institution subsidiaries of those institutions and holding companies. It conducts schools for examiners employed by the five federal member agencies represented on the Council and makes those schools available to employees of state agencies that supervise financial institutions. The Council was given additional statutory responsibilities by section 340 of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1980 to facilitate public access to data that depository institutions must disclose under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 (HMDA) and the aggregation of annual HMDA data, by census tract, for each metropolitan statistical area (MSA).

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