WASHINGTON - Glenn E. Brewer - a top fair-lending cop at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. - did not follow a typical regulator's career path.
In fact, an appearance on the television show "PrimeTime Live" in 1991 led Mr. Brewer to the FDIC's Chicago office.
Two years after he went undercover for ABC's news magazine to expose discrimination against blacks, the FDIC hired Mr. Brewer to battle lending discrimination in the Midwest.
As one of eight regional fair-lending specialists in the country, Mr. Brewer identifies banks that may be discriminating, aids in negotiations between bankers and community activists, and trains bankers.
"I do this because I want to make a difference in society," Mr. Brewer said. "I want it so that when people look at me they say, 'There is someone who is trying to make a difference in how we treat each other.' "
Colleagues describe Mr. Brewer, who graduated this year from Chicago- Kent College of Law, as hard-working and dedicated. They note that he managed to complete his undergraduate and law degrees while he worked full time and he and his wife raised three children.
His fellow FDIC workers said his drive is apparent.
Mr. Brewer spearheaded one project that analyzed 110 banks with abnormally large disparities between home mortgage loan rejection rates for whites and blacks. Most of the banks were able to explain the disparities. For them, the investigation ended there.
The other 45% either received new fair-lending exams or had to answer detailed questions about their rejection rates, he said.
Mr. Brewer also resolves feuds between banks and activists. His first case involved an Indiana bank, which settled a dispute with a local group. He declined to name the two parties, but said he was surprised at how much the bank and the group agreed: All he had to do was make them listen to each other, he said.
Mr. Brewer travels the Midwest giving bankers fair-lending advice. His No. 1 tip: Be prepared for exams.
Bankers also must constantly review their loan policies and operations to ensure their institutions are trying to serve the community's needs, he said.
For example, one banker asked him if he should employ Spanish-speaking loan officers because the bank's service area has become mostly Hispanic. Mr. Brewer asked if the bank's employees spoke Polish when Poles dominated the area. The banker said yes.
"My response was, 'What's the difference?'" Mr. Brewer recalled.
Finally, he said, bankers need to make loans.
"If you do those things properly, you don't have to worry about regulatory oversight," he said.
Mr. Brewer said he is not ready to endorse industry claims that it no longer discriminates. "Every time I want to say, 'Yes,' I am confronted by a bank that makes me say, 'No,'" he said.
He said he also is distressed when he hears bankers equate community reinvestment with credit allocation. "Bankers have to understand that CRA is not credit allocation," he said. "No one says you have to make bad loans. The point is, don't overlook members of your community."
Unfortunately, Mr. Brewer said, he has seen bankers do this for most of his life, beginning when he was 10 and his family moved from a lower-income neighborhood to a middle-class area of Chicago. By the time he was 15, he said, the neighborhood had become 98% black and lower income.
He blamed the exodus on real estate agents and lenders, who he said spread panic among whites about the influx of black homeowners.
"In that time you saw a total disinvestment in the neighborhood by financial institutions," Mr. Brewer said.
Attending the University of Iowa took Mr. Brewer from Chicago for four years. He returned in 1979, taking a job as a proofreader at a publishing firm. He eventually volunteered at the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, Chicago's preeminent civil rights group.
He worked as a tester, traveling to apartment buildings and banks to see how they treated African-Americans. Six years later, the group hired him full time to run the testing program.
The work was grueling, constantly exposing him to racism. Mary Davis, the council's senior vice president, said the testing program took a toll on everyone involved, including Mr. Brewer.
"It is not easy to be denied on the basis of race," she said. "Those people who tested for me are pioneers who have guts."
Mr. Brewer's big break came in 1991. "PrimeTime" anchor Diane Sawyer had lunch with actress Whoopi Goldberg. The actress, who is black, was ignored by the waiter, who directed his attention to Ms. Sawyer.
The encounter convinced Ms. Sawyer to do a piece on how blacks are treated. A friend of Mr. Brewer's - a "PrimeTime" producer - asked him and a colleague, John Kuhnen, who is white, to pose as customers at a variety of businesses in St. Louis.
They almost said no. "We were worried that it would tarnish the reputation of the agency," Mr. Brewer said. But they finally agreed and the result was a six-week undercover operation, complete with hidden cameras and microphones.
The duo went to banks, applied for apartments, looked at used cars, even had dry cleaning done. Their findings, broadcast in September 1991, showed that Mr. Brewer was treated differently most of the time.
The expose got a lot attention and turned the two men into celebrities. Mr. Kuhnen eventually joined Chicago's housing department. Mr. Brewer became a sought-after speaker, addressing the Kansas Bankers Association, Northern Trust Co., and the FDIC. He also produced a video for the FDIC.
Lorraine Reepmeyer, a senior vice president at Northern Trust, said she vividly remembers Mr. Brewer's 1992 address to 400 lenders. "He was very forthright and people learned a lot," she said. "He was very approachable, so people didn't hesitate to ask him any questions."
In 1993, Mr. Brewer met Robert Mooney, then the agency's community affairs officer in Chicago, who urged him to apply for one of the eight newly created fair-lending specialist slots.
"We decided to go with Glenn Brewer because we were particularly impressed not only with his interpersonal skills, but his very wide experiences and his legal training," Mr. Mooney said.
He took the job in November 1993, agreeing to work through this year. "I saw the job offered an opportunity to do what I was doing, but on a broader scale," he said.
The FDIC this month signed Mr. Brewer to another two-year term, despite agency downsizing. "This is such a specialized field that we just don't have people like Glenn," said Paul Sachtleben, director of the FDIC's division of compliance and consumer affairs. "So we have been authorized to extend him."
After completing his second term, Mr. Brewer plans to practice law in Chicago.
