Community Reinvestment Act: Simplified Strategic Plan Process for Community Banks

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <SUBAGY>Office of the Comptroller of the Currency</SUBAGY> <CFR>12 CFR Part 25</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID OCC-2025-0669]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Community Reinvestment Act: Simplified Strategic Plan Process for Community Banks</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Treasury. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed guidance and request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC or agency) is proposing supplemental guidance on a simplified strategic plan process for community banks interested in requesting that the OCC evaluate their Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) performance under a strategic plan. The proposed simplified strategic plan process is designed to make the strategic plan option more accessible to and less burdensome for community banks. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by February 20, 2026. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Commenters are encouraged to submit comments through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Please use the title “Community Reinvestment Act: Simplified Strategic Plan Process for Community Banks” to facilitate the organization and distribution of the comments. You may submit comments by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal—Regulations.gov:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://regulations.gov.</E> Enter Docket ID “OCC-2025-0669” in the Search Box and click “Search.” Public comments can be submitted via the “Comment” box below the displayed document information or by clicking on the document title and then clicking the “Comment” box on the top-left side of the screen. For help with submitting effective comments, please click on “Commenter's Checklist.” For assistance with the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> site, please call 1-866-498-2945 (toll free) Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. EST, or email <E T="03">regulationshelpdesk@gsa.gov.</E> • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Chief Counsel's Office, Attention: Comment Processing, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, 400 7th Street SW, Suite 3E-218, Washington, DC 20219. • <E T="03">Hand Delivery/Courier:</E> 400 7th Street SW, Suite 3E-218, Washington, DC 20219. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> You must include “OCC” as the agency name and Docket ID “OCC-2025-0669” in your comment. In general, the OCC will enter all comments received into the docket and publish the comments on the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> website without change, including any business or personal information provided such as name and address information, email addresses, or phone numbers. Comments received, including attachments and other supporting materials, are part of the public record and subject to public disclosure. Do not include any information in your comment or supporting materials that you consider confidential or inappropriate for public disclosure. You may review comments and other related materials that pertain to this action by the following method: • <E T="03">Viewing Comments Electronically—Regulations.gov:</E> Go to <E T="03">https://regulations.gov/.</E> Enter Docket ID “OCC-2025-0669” in the Search Box and click “Search.” Click on the “Dockets” tab and then the document's title. After clicking the document's title, click the “Browse All Comments” tab. Comments can be viewed and filtered by clicking on the “Sort By” drop-down on the right side of the screen or the “Refine Comments Results” options on the left side of the screen. Supporting materials can be viewed by clicking on the “Browse Documents” tab. Click on the “Sort By” drop-down on the right side of the screen or the “Refine Results” options on the left side of the screen checking the “Supporting & Related Material” checkbox. For assistance with the <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> site, please call 1-866-498-2945 (toll free) Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. EST, or email <E T="03">regulationshelpdesk@gsa.gov.</E> The docket may be viewed after the close of the comment period in the same manner as during the comment period. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Emily Boyes, Counsel, Chief Counsel's Office, 202-649-5490; Andrea Shearin, Policy Specialist, or Cassandra Remmenga, Policy Specialist, Office of the Chief National Bank Examiner, 202-649-5470. If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> Congress enacted the CRA  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> in 1977 based on its findings that: “(1) regulated financial institutions are required by law to demonstrate that their deposit facilities serve the convenience and needs of the communities in which they are chartered to do business; (2) the convenience and needs of communities include the need for credit services as well as deposit services; and (3) regulated financial institutions have continuing and affirmative obligation[s] to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Accordingly, the purpose of the CRA is to require the OCC  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> to encourage regulated financial institutions  <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> “to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered consistent with the safe and sound operation of the institutions.”  <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> To achieve this purpose, the CRA requires the OCC to “assess [an] institution's record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with the safe and sound operation of such institution.”  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Upon completing this assessment, the statute requires the OCC to “prepare a written evaluation of the institution's record of meeting the credit needs of its entire community, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.”  <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> The statute further provides that the OCC must “take such record into account in its evaluation of an application for a deposit facility by such institution.”  <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Public Law 95-128, 91 Stat. 1147 (1977) (codified at 12 U.S.C. 2901 <E T="03">et seq.</E> (as amended)). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  12 U.S.C. 2901(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  In addition to the OCC, the CRA applies to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board). <E T="03">See e.g.,</E> 12 U.S.C. 2901(b), 2902(1), 2903(a), and 2905. This <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> discusses guidance being proposed by the OCC, and, therefore, focuses the discussion on the CRA and implementing regulations as they relate to the OCC. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  The CRA defines “regulated financial institution” to mean an insured depository institution as defined in 12 U.S.C. 1813(c)(2). <E T="03">See</E> 12 U.S.C. 2902(2). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  12 U.S.C. 2901(b). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  12 U.S.C. 2903(a)(1). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  12 U.S.C. 2906(a). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  12 U.S.C. 2903(a)(2). </FTNT> The CRA directs the OCC to publish regulations to carry out the purposes of the CRA. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> In general, the OCC's CRA regulation, first promulgated in 1978, establishes the standards under which the OCC evaluates banks' <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> CRA performance. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> The OCC's 1995 CRA regulations  <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> significantly revised and clarified the 1978 CRA regulations. Currently, the OCC evaluates banks' CRA performance pursuant to the 1995 CRA regulation, as amended in the OCC's 2021 CRA Final Rule (CRA regulation). <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> During the OCC's 30 years of experience examining banks under the CRA regulation, the agency has developed an in-depth understanding of how banks of different sizes and business models meet the credit needs of their communities. This includes community banks, which under the OCC's current organizational structure, are those with up to $30 billion in assets. <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> The OCC also has received extensive feedback on the benefits of, as well as stakeholder concerns with, the CRA regulation. <SU>15</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  12 U.S.C. 2905. Pursuant to Title III of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Public Law 111-203, 124 Stat. 1376, 1522 (2010), the Office of Thrift Supervision's (OTS) CRA rulemaking authority for all savings associations transferred to the OCC and the OTS's CRA supervisory authority for State savings associations transferred to the FDIC. As a result, the OCC's CRA regulation applies to both State and Federal savings associations, in addition to national banks, and the FDIC enforces the OCC's CRA regulation with respect to State savings associations. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>  For purposes of this <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> , the term “bank” includes insured national banks, Federal savings associations, and certain Federal branches of foreign banks as defined in 12 CFR 25.11 (Mar. 29, 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>  43 FR 47144 (Oct. 12, 1978). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  The OCC originally issued separate regulations for national banks and Federal savings associations in 12 CFR part 25 and part 195, respectively. The OCC integrated these CRA regulations in its 2021 CRA final rule into a single CRA regulation, 12 CFR part 25, applicable to national banks and savings associations (2021 CRA Regulation). <E T="03">See</E> 86 FR 71328 (Dec. 15, 2021). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>  The simplified strategic plan process proposed i ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 163k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━