How to read Community Reinvestment Act data

What the Act does

The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 tells the federal banking agencies to encourage banks to help meet the credit needs of the communities where they are chartered, consistent with safe and sound operation. Three agencies carry it out: the OCC for national banks and federal savings associations, the Federal Reserve for state member banks, and the FDIC for state nonmember banks and state savings associations. Each has its own copy of the regulation. The FDIC’s is 12 CFR part 345.

Two things come out of the regulation that a lender searcher can use: a yearly data file, and a written evaluation of each bank.

Which rules are in force

This needs a plain statement, because the published code is confusing right now.

In February 2024 the agencies published a new final rule. The agencies’ August 12, 2026 proposal says “the currently applicable rules, promulgated in 1995,” are the version in effect as of March 29, 2024. In July 2025 the three agencies proposed to rescind the 2024 rule and put back the earlier regulation. In August 2026 the OCC and the FDIC proposed “targeted changes” to that earlier framework, with comments due October 13, 2026.

So, as of November 11, 2026: the rules a bank follows are the 1995 framework. In the FDIC’s code that text is printed as appendix G to part 345. The description below follows appendix G. If the 2026 proposal becomes final, parts of this guide will change, and the checked date at the top of this page tells you when we last looked.

Who reports the data

Under the applicable rule, a bank “except a small bank” must collect data on each small business and small farm loan it originates or buys, and must report totals to its regulator each year by March 1 for the prior calendar year.

Small bank is a defined term. The text of appendix G printed in the electronic code on November 11, 2026 defines it as a bank with assets under $1.564 billion as of December 31 of either of the prior two calendar years. The rule requires the dollar figure to be adjusted each year for inflation, and the code carries a note that a later amendment could not be incorporated. Treat $1.564 billion as the figure printed on that date, and check the agencies’ current threshold notice before relying on it.

The practical point holds whatever the exact line: most community banks do not report CRA loan data. A small bank may choose to report if it wants to be evaluated under the tests used for larger banks.

Credit unions are not subject to the Act. Nonbank lenders are not either.

What is in the data

For each geography where the bank made or bought a small business or small farm loan, the bank reports the total number and amount of loans:

What a reporting bank files for each geography (12 CFR part 345, appendix G, section 345.42(b)(1))

A small business loan here is a loan included in “loans to small businesses” as the call report instructions define them, and a small farm loan is the same for “loans to small farms.” Those definitions cap the original amount of the loan. A $3,000,000 loan to a small company is not a small business loan in this file, however small the company. See small business loan under the CRA.

The bank also reports one pair of numbers for community development loans: the total number and total amount originated or purchased. A community development loan has community development as its primary purpose. Affordable multifamily housing loans often qualify.

From the bank reports, the agencies prepare a CRA Disclosure Statement for each reporting bank and aggregate statements for each metropolitan area and for the non-metropolitan part of each state. In counties of 500,000 people or fewer, a bank’s statement shows its small business and small farm loans by the income level of the census tract.

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The public file and the evaluation

Every bank, small or large, keeps a public file. Under the applicable rule it includes written comments from the public for the current year and the two before it, the public section of the bank’s most recent CRA performance evaluation, a list of branches and of branches opened and closed, a list of services, and a map of each assessment area. You can ask for it at the bank.

The performance evaluation is a written report by the bank’s regulator. It describes the bank, its assessment areas and its lending, and it ends in one of four ratings named in the rule: outstanding, satisfactory, needs to improve or substantial noncompliance. Each agency publishes its evaluations in a searchable database.

For a broker, the useful part of an evaluation is the description, not the rating. It says in plain words where the bank considers its market to be and what kinds of loans the examiners found it making. That is a dated statement by a regulator, written for a different purpose, and it can be several years old.

This site does not interpret a rating or an evaluation. Where one is shown, it is the agency, the date, the title and a link.

How to use it

To find larger banks that make small business loans in a county. The aggregate and bank-level statements show which reporting banks made loans there and in which size band. A bank with hundreds of loans of $100,000 or less in a county has a small business lending operation there. The count does not say what kind of credit each loan is, so ask.

To see where a bank says its market is. Read the assessment area map in the public file or the evaluation.

To see a bank’s community development lending. The total is reported, and the evaluation often describes individual loans in general terms.

Worked example (hypothetical). A broker is placing a $180,000 equipment loan for a landscaping company in a county of 200,000 people. In the CRA statements for the county, Bank A shows 400 small business loans, 380 of them in the $100,000 or less band. Bank B shows 60 loans, 35 of them in the $100,000 to $250,000 band. The request falls in the middle band. Bank B made 35 loans of that size in the county and Bank A made at most 20 (400 less 380, split between the two higher bands). On this record alone, Bank B’s lenders see more requests like this one. The two community banks in the county do not appear at all, because they are small banks under the rule, so the broker checks them in the call report data instead.

What it cannot tell you

• Small banks, credit unions and nonbank lenders are missing. For those, use call report balances, the NCUA file and SBA data.
• No loan detail. No rate, term, collateral or industry.
• No larger loans. A loan above the call report’s small business cap is not counted.
• Made or bought. The figures combine loans a bank originated and loans it purchased.
• A year or more old. Banks report by March 1 for the prior year, and the agencies publish after that.
• No appetite. The file is a count of past loans.

Other files that fill the gaps

• Call reports show the business and farm loans every bank holds, including small banks. The business loan book across the lenders on this site is $2.63T FDIC call reports and NCUA 5300, Jun 30, 2026.
• SBA data lists each 7(a) and 504 loan with its lender.
• HMDA lists multifamily and rental-house loans.

Questions to put to the bank

• Is this county inside your assessment area?
• Do you make business loans of this size here, or do you send them to a card or small-ticket unit?
• Would this loan count as community development for you, and does that change how you look at it?

General information, not legal, tax or credit advice. A lender's own policy decides what it will do; ask it for the policy in writing.

Source and date appear beside each figure. Banks report balances, not loans made. Loans made come only from HMDA and SBA files. We do not audit filings and can make errors joining them. Report a problem