Owning a home has long been one of the most effective ways to build wealth. But for many lower-income renters – especially for Black families and other people of color – the leap from renting to owning can seem nearly impossible. For many, one of the biggest obstacles to qualifying for a mortgage is insufficient credit history. Today, Fannie Mae is taking an important step forward to change that. We are making a groundbreaking update to our automated mortgage underwriting system, Desktop Underwriter®, to allow lenders to consider a history of recurring rent payments in assessing... Read more

Virginia Community Capital Bank in Richmond prizes the clean energy lending program it launched five years ago. But as a small community development financial institution, it lacked the resources to find socially minded depositors at the scale it wanted to fund its solar loans. Ando, a challenger bank that focuses on sustainability, is finding them instead. The San Diego fintech has the trappings of a typical neobank: no monthly fees, early direct deposit and interest rates that grow in exchange for referrals. But its mission is to fund clean energy, sustainable agriculture and other green... Read more

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to rattle businesses nationwide and the federal government launched its Paycheck Protection Program, businesses in Maryland and beyond struggled to process their applications. The PPP program was launched in April 2020, but some businesses said their applications were delayed — in part because they could not find banks that accepted applications, and many banks weren't set up to do so. John Lewis, president and chief operating officer of the Harbor Bank of Maryland, said his bank not only accepted PPP applications, but his employees went out of their way to... Read more

No one can reasonably deny that when the overall economy gets a cold, low- and moderate-income individuals and neighborhoods get the flu, largely through no imprudence of their own. History proves that lower-income families, particularly those comprising people of color, get fired first and rehired last. As a result, no matter how hard they work to save, they're almost always left a step behind. The Great Recession was a clear example: While a range of big banking institutions were given taxpayer bailouts, more modest communities were left with a Sisyphean boulder. As we emerge from the... Read more

Every year, B Lab recognizes the top-performing B Corps creating the greatest impact through their businesses. These B Corps are named Best for the World as their verified scores in the five impact areas evaluated on the B Impact Assessment (BIA)—community, customers, environment, governance, and workers—are amongst the global top 5% in their corresponding size group. These businesses are proving that competing not only to be the best in the world, but the best for the world, is a winning strategy, and they can lead the way as more businesses continue to join the movement that is... Read more

Join the San Francisco Fed on August 25 for a virtual event titled "Fintech, Racial Equity, and an Inclusive Financial System" to launch a new issue of Community Development Innovation Review. The event will explore the promises and pitfalls of fintech as a means of expanding financial inclusion and reaching underserved communities of color. Innovations in financial technology, or fintech, are changing the ways people interact with the financial system. With these changes comes the possibility of improving inclusion for those who currently lack access to the traditional financial... Read more

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced it will propose rescinding the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) rule issued in May 2020 and is committed to working with the Federal Reserve (Board) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to put forward a joint rulemaking that strengthens and modernizes the CRA.
This decision follows the completion of a review initiated by Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu shortly after he took office."To ensure fairness in the face of persistent and rising inequality and changes in banking, the CRA must be... Read more

The legislative housing package led by Congresswoman Maxine Waters includes: The Housing is Infrastructure Act of 2021, which would provide a historic investment of over $600 billion in equitable, affordable, and accessible housing infrastructure. This generational investment would address our national eviction and homelessness crises, increase access to homeownership, and support a robust recovery from the pandemic by creating jobs, addressing climate change, and improving housing stability for struggling households; The Ending Homelessness Act of 2021, which would end homelessness... Read more

Different demographic groups in the United States use banks in different ways. White Americans are far more likely to have a bank account and use banking services. Black, Indigenous and people of color, by contrast, are more likely to be unbanked or underbanked. A century ago, that was by design, but with the passage of anti-discrimination and anti-redlining laws in the 1960s and 1970s, nonwhite Americans have gradually been increasing their access to the financial mainstream. But there's one group that has been harder to reach than any other: Indigenous communities, and particularly... Read more