OCC Will Have Community Lending Proposal Out by Year’s End

Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting said that his agency would release a proposal to rewrite community lending and investment rules even as regulators wrestle with how to measure banks’ activities.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Federal Reserve have been working for more than a year to craft a proposal to update the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 law that requires banks to lend in low- to moderate-income communities. The regulators then grade banks’ performance, with a poor evaluation potentially limiting banks’ mergers and other growth.

The OCC released an ...