The federal banking agencies today released 2017 Community Reinvestment Act data on small business, small farm and community development lending. The CRA requires banks with more than $1.2 billion in assets to report data in these areas.
The 718 reporting banks originated or purchased approximately 6.6 million small business loans totaling $242 billion. The total number of loans originated by reporting banks decreased by about 12 percent from 2016, and the dollar amount of originations increased about 1 percent. Small farm loan originations increased by about 13 percent year-on-year, while the total dollar amount increased by about 3.4 percent. About 52 percent of the reported small business loans and 58 percent of reported farm loans were made to firms with less than $1 million in revenue.
Just 630 banks reported community development lending activity totaling $96 billion. That figure was little changed from 2016, the agencies noted.
