Credit unions aren't the only institutions taking heat from community groups over their record of service to the underserved.
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A consumer group is also turning up the heat on banks and calling for an overhaul to toughen up the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that is already strongly opposed by the banking industry.
The National Training and Information Center, an affiliate of National People's Action, Chicago, wants to see four changes in CRA. The changes would require regulators to look at sub-prime affiliates or subsidiaries during a bank or thrift's CRA exam; add a fair-lending test to exams; establish more precise CRA ratings, and expand the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to include applicants' credit scores, and a loan's interest rate, fees and points.
In addition, the group is calling for banks to be denied a "satisfactory" grade when a CRA exam finds evidence of discriminatory treatment of loan applicants. It also said that if the proposed HMDA fields are not added, lending through subprime affiliates should not count toward fulfillment of CRA requirements.