CRA Asset-Size Thresholds: Every Annual Adjustment, 2005 to 2026
Two numbers decide which Community Reinvestment Act examination an institution gets and how much data it has to collect: the ceiling below which a bank is a small institution, and the floor above which a small institution is also an intermediate small institution. The agencies adjust both every year for inflation, so the answer for any given bank depends on which year you are asking about.
This page holds every year from the first published figures to the current ones, one row per year, with that year's own Federal Register document linked next to the figures. The thresholds are set jointly by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the FDIC, with the OCC and at one point the OTS party to the earlier ones, and the adjustment is required by the CRA regulations rather than being discretionary.
For 2026, in effect January 7 to December 31, 2026:
Small institution: less than $1.649 billionIntermediate small institution: at least $412 million, and less than $1.649 billion
Set by a CPI-W change of +2.51% over the 12 months ending the preceding November. Read the release.
The thresholds by year
The small institution figure is a ceiling: a bank is small if it was below it as of December 31 of either of the prior two calendar years. The intermediate small figure is a floor, and it is tested differently, on both of the prior two years. The next section sets out why that asymmetry matters.
| Year | In effect | Small institution, less than | Intermediate small, at least | CPI-W change applied | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | January 7 to December 31, 2026 | $1.649 billion | $412 million | +2.51% | FRB and FDIC joint notice, 91 FR 509, 7 January 2026 |
| 2025 | January 1 to December 31, 2025 | $1.609 billion | $402 million | +2.91% | FRB and FDIC joint notice, 89 FR 106480, 30 December 2024 |
| 2024 | From January 1, 2024 | $1.564 billion | $391 million | +4.06% | FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 88 FR 87895, 20 December 2023 |
| 2023 | From January 1, 2023 | $1.503 billion | $376 million | +8.60% | FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 87 FR 78829, 23 December 2022 |
| 2022 | From January 1, 2022 | $1.384 billion | $346 million | +4.73% | FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 86 FR 71813, 20 December 2021 |
| 2021 | From January 1, 2021 | $1.322 billion | $330 million | +1.29% | FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 85 FR 83747, 23 December 2020 |
| 2020 | From January 1, 2020 | $1.305 billion | $326 million | +1.62% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 84 FR 71738, 30 December 2019 |
| 2019 | From January 1, 2019 | $1.284 billion | $321 million | +2.59% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 83 FR 66601, 27 December 2018 |
| 2018 | From January 1, 2018 | $1.252 billion | $313 million | +2.11% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 82 FR 61143, 27 December 2017 |
| 2017 | From January 18, 2017 | $1.226 billion | $307 million | +0.84% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 82 FR 5354, 18 January 2017 |
| 2016 | From January 1, 2016 | $1.216 billion | $304 million | -0.42% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 80 FR 81162, 29 December 2015 |
| 2015 | From January 1, 2015 | $1.221 billion | $305 million | +1.60% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 79 FR 77852, 29 December 2014 |
| 2014 | From January 1, 2014 | $1.202 billion | $300 million | +1.39% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 78 FR 79283, 30 December 2013 |
| 2013 | From January 1, 2013 | $1.186 billion | $296 million | +2.23% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 77 FR 75521, 21 December 2012 |
| 2012 | From January 1, 2012 | $1.160 billion | $290 million | +3.43% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 76 FR 79529, 22 December 2011 |
| 2011 | From January 1, 2011 | $1.122 billion | $280 million | +2.21% | OCC, FRB, FDIC and OTS joint final rule, 75 FR 82217, 30 December 2010 |
| 2010 | From January 1, 2010 | $1.098 billion | $274 million | -0.98% | OCC, FRB, FDIC and OTS joint final rule, 74 FR 68662, 29 December 2009 |
| 2009 | From January 1, 2009 | $1.109 billion | $277 million | +4.49% | OCC, FRB, FDIC and OTS joint final rule, 73 FR 78153, 22 December 2008 |
| 2008 | From January 1, 2008 | $1.061 billion | $265 million | +2.70% | OCC, FRB, FDIC and OTS joint final rule, 72 FR 72571, 21 December 2007 |
| 2007 | From January 1, 2007 | $1.033 billion | $258 million | +3.32% | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 71 FR 78335, 29 December 2006 |
| 2006 | Carried over; no separate 2006 adjustment | $1 billion | $250 million | not stated | Confirmed as the then-current figures in the joint final rule at 71 FR 78335, 29 December 2006 |
| 2005 | From September 1, 2005 | $1 billion | $250 million | not stated | OCC, FRB and FDIC joint final rule, 70 FR 44256, 2 August 2005 (baseline) |
This page holds 22 years, with no gaps. Where a release states no CPI-W percentage the cell reads "not stated" rather than carrying a figure worked out here, and if a year's document were ever unreachable the row would be absent rather than estimated. A visible gap is better than a number nobody can check.
The years that do not follow the pattern
Four things in the table above will look like errors and are not.
2005 and 2006 are a baseline, not an adjustment. The CPI-W formula was adopted by the agencies in the joint final rule at 70 FR 44256, effective September 1, 2005, which set the figures at $1 billion and $250 million. There was no December 2005 release, and the first inflation adjustment took effect January 1, 2007. Those two rows carry no percentage because none applies.
The thresholds went down twice. The CPI-W fell over the relevant 12-month period for 2010 and again for 2016, so the figures decreased rather than rose: $1.109 billion to $1.098 billion, and $1.221 billion to $1.216 billion. Where the change is zero the agencies make no adjustment at all and the prior year's figures carry over.
Two years did not start on January 1. The 2017 adjustment was published on January 18, 2017 and states "Beginning January 18, 2017", so the 2016 figures governed for the first seventeen days of that year. The 2026 notice has the same shape for a different reason: it took effect January 7, 2026 because the CPI-W data needed for the calculation was delayed, so the 2025 figures governed the first six days.
The agencies signing the release changed. The OCC, the Federal Reserve Board and the FDIC issued the early ones; the OTS joined for 2007 through 2011 and then disappeared when Dodd-Frank moved savings-association CRA authority to the OCC. From 2020 the notices are the Board and the FDIC only, because the OCC now adjusts the asset-size criteria for the institutions it regulates separately. The dollar figures in this table are the Board and FDIC ones; an OCC-regulated institution should check the OCC's own document for the later years.
One more thing worth knowing if you are reading the underlying documents rather than this table. Through 2024 the adjustment was made by joint final rule; for 2025 and 2026 it was made by notice instead. That is a consequence of the October 2023 CRA modernization final rule being challenged and enjoined, which left the legacy regulations in force while the eCFR carried the enjoined text. The annual adjustment itself continued without interruption.
How the threshold is applied
The test is not run on today's balance sheet. Both figures are measured against total assets as of December 31 of the two prior calendar years, and the two figures use that two-year window differently.
An institution is a small institution if its assets were below the ceiling as of December 31 of either of the prior two years. One year under the line is enough. An institution is an intermediate small institution if it is a small institution and its assets were at or above the floor as of December 31 of both of the prior two years. Both years have to clear it.
The effect is that the definitions are sticky in the direction that favors the institution. A bank that grows past the small ceiling in one year is still small for that year, because the year before was under it. A bank that crosses the intermediate small floor is not intermediate small until it has been above the floor at two consecutive year-ends.
The adjustment itself is mechanical. The agencies apply the year-over-year change in the average Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), not seasonally adjusted, for the 12-month period ending in November, and round to the nearest million. Where that change is zero the agencies make no adjustment and the thresholds carry over. The formula was first adopted for CRA purposes in 2005.
What changes when an institution crosses a line
Which side of each line an institution sits on decides the examination it receives and what it has to collect. What follows is stated at the level the agency releases state it, and no further.
A small institution is examined under the small institution performance standards, a streamlined lending test, and is not subject to the CRA data collection and reporting requirements that apply to large institutions. An institution at or above the small ceiling is a large institution: examined under the lending, investment and service tests, and it does collect and report CRA data.
An intermediate small institution sits between the two. It is examined under the small institution lending test plus a separate community development test, and it is likewise not subject to the large-institution data collection and reporting requirements.
Because the thresholds move every year, an institution near a line can change category without its balance sheet changing at all. That is the case worth diarizing: the figure that applied when the last examination was scoped is not necessarily the figure that applies to the next one.
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Tab-separated, so it pastes straight into a spreadsheet. The source line is part of the block on purpose: if these figures travel, the attribution travels with them.
Related figures
The CRA thresholds are not the only ones the agencies adjust each year. The HMDA and Regulation Z asset-size exemption thresholds move on the same CPI-W basis and are a different set of numbers entirely; those are in the CFPB's two annual threshold adjustments.
If the reason you are looking this up is to work out what your institution has to file, Comply HMDA/CRA/SBL collects, edit-checks and submits HMDA, CRA and Section 1071 data from one database, and the assessment area mapping an examination asks for is in Comply Mapping.
Methodology and sources
Every figure on this page is read off the agencies' own document for that year, and that document is linked in the row it supports. The releases are issued jointly, normally in December, announcing the thresholds for the year beginning the following January 1.
Nothing here is estimated, interpolated or computed. We do not derive a year's thresholds from the prior year and the CPI-W, even though the formula would allow it, because the published figure is rounded to the nearest million and the agencies' own number is the one that governs.
Refreshed: 2026-09-22. The agencies publish a new adjustment each December, so a latest row older than the current year means this page needs refreshing rather than that no adjustment was made.
How should you cite this page?
These are public federal figures compiled with their sources attached, so use them freely. The only thing asked is that a reader can trace them.
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