The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today released the lists of rural counties and rural or underserved counties that entities can use in 2018 to determine whether they are exempt from certain regulatory requirements under the bureau’s Ability-to-Repay, escrow, HOEPA and appraisal rules.

With Midwestern grain and row crop commodities continuing to trade in lower-price bands, producers’ ability to manage price risk takes on growing importance.

Hopefully an unintended consequence of the major tax legislation enacted in December will be the triggering of a fundamental review of the taxation of the FCS and agricultural co-ops relative to banks and other investor-owned businesses.

The latest episode of the ABA Banking Journal Podcast tackles the shortage of qualified appraisers -- especially in rural areas, where lenders are seeing delays of several months in getting appraisals for commercial real estate and agricultural transactions.

One unintended effect of the wide-ranging tax legislation Congress enacted last month was a slight reduction in the competitive edge the FCS has long had for loans secured by real estate.

Only about one in 10 banks can be considered at “high” credit risk, according to the FDIC’s most recent credit survey -- down from 42 percent in 2010, when banks were working through a backlog of bad loans.

By Bert Ely The FCS’s $10 billion line-of-credit with the Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank, or FFB, was recently renewed for another year, to expire on Sept. 30, 2018. This line-of-credit was first created in September 2013 and has been renewed annually since then. No public notice was given announcing this renewal — its extension for another year could only ...

In the July Farm Credit Watch, I wrote that the Farm Credit System effectively accepts deposits, through the cash management services some FCS associations offer to their member/borrowers. As the article described, many associations in two of the four FCS districts — those funded by CoBank and AgriBank — accept deposits on behalf of the bank that funds them. That ...

The federal banking agencies today released 2016 Community Reinvestment Act Data on small business, small farm and community development lending.