On July 31, 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a joint notice of proposed rulemaking to amend their Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations. The Federal Reserve did not join. Fed-supervised institutions would stay under the current rule unless the Board acts separately.
The agencies frame the proposal as an effort to better align the regulations with the statutory mandate. Comments are due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.
The headline change is the asset-size thresholds that decide how a bank is examined and whether it has to collect and report CRA data. RiskExec ran the numbers against the 2024 CRA peer data, the most recent published set. The result is a required-reporting population that shrinks by about 60 percent while the loan volume inside it barely moves. That combination is what should worry anyone who relies on peer analysis.
What the OCC and FDIC Are Proposing
Today's CRA rule sorts banks into three examination frameworks: small, intermediate small, and large. The OCC and FDIC proposal keeps three frameworks but moves every threshold up, and it applies to OCC and FDIC banks only.
The proposal replaces that structure with three tiers, for OCC and FDIC banks only:
Category
Current (all three agencies)
Proposed (OCC and FDIC only)
Small
Under $412 million
Under $1 billion
Intermediate
$412 million to $1.649 billion
$1 billion to $10 billion
Large
Over $1.649 billion
Over $10 billion
A note on the current column: the regulation formally defines two categories, small and large, with "intermediate small bank" defined as a subset of small. In practice it operates as its own examination framework with its own tests, which is how it is shown above and how examiners apply it. The proposal makes that third tier explicit and renames it "intermediate."
Asset size would continue to be measured using December 31 Call Report data for two consecutive calendar years, consistent with how the current thresholds work.
State member banks would stay under the current thresholds unless the Board acts separately, which means a $3 billion OCC or FDIC bank would be examined as Intermediate while a $3 billion Fed-supervised bank would still be examined as Large.
What Happens to the Reporting Population
The tables below count 2024 CRA data reporters by tier. Numbers in parentheses are the small business and small farm loans each group reported.
Under current thresholds:
Agency
Small Bank
Intermediate Small Bank
Large Bank
OCC
1 (0)
15 (11,847)
176 (7,935,294)
Federal Reserve
0 (0)
11 (1,863)
155 (389,628)
FDIC
2 (103)
48 (10,011)
323 (954, 843)
Small and intermediate small banks are not required to report. The ones that appear here opted in voluntarily.
Under the proposed thresholds:
Agency
Small Bank
Intermediate Small Bank
Large Bank
OCC
5 (547)
131 (661,674)
56 (7,284,920)
Federal Reserve
0 (0)
11 (1,863)
155 (389,628)
FDIC
19 (3,174)
302 (612,438)
52 (349,345)
Today, 499 OCC and FDIC institutions are classified as Large Banks, 68 percent of all 731 reporters. Under the proposal, 108 of them would remain Large Banks, 14.8 percent of the 731.
Count all three agencies and the large-bank population falls from 654 institutions to 263.
Two Things Follow From This
The Peer Data Thins Out Where Mid-Size Banks Need It Most
Only banks over $10 billion, plus voluntary opt-ins, would collect and report small business, small farm, and community development data. Banks landing in the new intermediate tier, including everything between roughly $1.65 billion and $10 billion, would drop out of mandatory reporting.
Total reported loan volume in the required population falls about 13 percent, from roughly 9.28 million loans to 8.02 million. The institution count falls 60 percent. The largest banks carry the volume, so the aggregate still looks healthy while the number of genuinely comparable institutions collapses.
For FDIC banks the effect is sharper. Large-bank reported loans drop from 954,843 to 349,345, a 63 percent reduction. A $3 billion FDIC-supervised bank trying to benchmark against banks its own size would find very few left in the data.
Examination Expectations Shift Down a Tier
The proposal does more than redefine "large bank." Moving institutions into the intermediate framework reduces their reporting obligations and removes the separate Investment and Service Tests that have historically pushed banks toward qualified investments and community development services. The agencies also propose narrowing retail banking services review to credit services and excluding deposit services.
Intermediate banks still have CRA obligations. The incentive structure is what changes. Whether less oversight and less public data translates into fewer community development investments in the markets where these banks gather deposits is the question the comment period exists to answer.
The proposal also puts new conditions on grants, including a cap on the share of a grant or donation a recipient can spend on indirect and administrative costs. That provision deserves its own read if your institution funds community development programs.
What to Do Now
Nothing here is final. Current classifications, examination procedures, and reporting requirements stay in effect. The comment period is where the thresholds get settled, and it closes October 13, 2026.
Four things worth doing before then:
Find your category. Compare your December 31 asset totals for the last two years against both the current and proposed thresholds, and confirm which agency supervises you. Those two answers together decide your framework, and this is the first proposal where the second one changes the answer.
Decide about voluntary reporting. If you would drop out of mandatory reporting, the choice to continue is yours. It affects your own trend data as much as it affects the public record.
Pull your peer set now. Take the institutions you currently benchmark against and mark which ones would stop reporting. If most of your comparison group thins out, that is worth knowing before your next exam cycle rather than during it.
File a comment. The agencies requested feedback, including on an alternative $850 million small bank threshold. Comments go to OCC Docket ID OCC-2026-0694 and FDIC RIN 3064-AG31 by October 13, 2026. The institutions that run these programs have information the agencies do not.
Analysis based on 2024 CRA peer data covering 731 reporting institutions, the most recent published set.
About the Author
Dr. Anurag Agarwal, PhD
Founder & President
Dr. Anurag Agarwal is the Founder & President of RiskExec.
Anurag is the original architect and developer behind the RiskExec platform, and has been working within the fair lending and compliance industry for more than thirty years. Anurag began working on fair lending procedure automation while getting his PhD in Operations Research, Statistics, and Management Science from the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Today, he is a nationally renowned expert in fair lending, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), and other related areas, and is a frequent speaker at ABA and MBA industry events.
Anurag co-founded Compliance Solutions back in 2001, before founding Risk Management Solutions Inc. in 2006 and serving as its President and CEO until 2015. RMS was ultimately acquired by Asurity Technologies in 2015. As of January 2025, RiskExec became a standalone company.
When Anurag is not spending time developing new RiskExec software modules or educating financial institutions about the importance of doing the right thing to further the American dream of home ownership, he can be found spending time with his children and grandchildren, or traveling and taking cooking classes with his wife of 35 years.
