The federal banking agencies today released 2020 Community Reinvestment Act data on small business, small farm and community development lending. The CRA requires banks with more than $1.305 billion in assets to report data in these areas.
The 687 reporting banks originated or purchased 8.4 million small business loans totaling $461.8 billion. The total number of loans originated by reporting banks increased by about 9.7% from 2019, due largely to the Paycheck Protection Program, the agencies said. Small-farm loan originations fell by about 1.7% year-on-year, while the total dollar amount increased by 7.9%. About 40.7% of the reported small-business loans and 56.3% of reported farm loans were made to firms with less than $1 million in revenue.
A total of 621 banks reported community development lending activity totaling nearly $169 billion in 2020, a 52% increase from the amount reported in 2019, again largely attributable to PPP lending since many PPP loans that did not meet requirements for CRA small-business loan reporting qualified for community development reporting.
