CRA
How to Benchmark Your CRA and HMDA Lending Against Peer Data

To benchmark CRA and HMDA lending against peers, pick a group of lenders that compete in the same markets with a similar size and product mix, pull their public HMDA and CRA data for the same year and the same geography, and compare market share, lending by tract income level, denial rates and pricing. The comparison only holds up if the peer group does. Your own numbers mean little on their own. Say you hold a 6% share of home purchase originations in moderate-income tracts. That could be strong or weak, and nobody can tell which until it sits next to what lenders like you did in the same tracts in the same year. Examiners make that comparison as a matter of course, so it makes sense to make it first. This guide covers where the data comes from, how to build a peer group that will
HMDA vs CRA vs Section 1071: What Each Rule Collects and Who Has to File

HMDA, CRA and Section 1071 are three separate federal reporting regimes. HMDA (Regulation C) covers applications for dwelling-secured loans. CRA data reporting covers small business, small farm and community development loans at banks above the small bank size. Section 1071 (Regulation B, subpart B) will cover small business credit applications at lenders that originate at least 1,000 a year for two years running. They overlap more than their names suggest. All three hang on a census tract, two of them ask about demographics, and one loan can look like it belongs on two registers when the rules put it on only one. Below, the three sit side by side. Every threshold and date below comes from the current regulation text or the agency notice that set it, and the sources are listed at the
- California's New Fair Lending Exam Law: What State-Chartered Banks, Credit Unions and Mortgage Licensees Should Have Ready
- Fair Lending Regression Analysis: What It Controls For and How to Explain a Pricing Disparity
- 2026 HMDA Data: Your Filing Checklist for the March 1, 2027 Deadline
- How to Evaluate Fair Lending and CRA Software: What to Test Before You Sign
- HMDA Plus: What It Actually Changed in the LAR Workflow
- How to Fix the 10 Most Common HMDA Edit Check Errors
- CFPB and DOJ Settle Redlining Claims Against Non-Depository Mortgage Companies Before Change in Administration
- CFPB, DOJ Order Trident Mortgage Company to Pay More Than $22 Million for Deliberate Discrimination Against Minority Families
- What a Fair Lending Exam Actually Asks For
- Fair Servicing: What Examiners Test in Servicing Data, and How to Test It First
- Fair Lending Self-Assessment: A Step-by-Step Guide for 2026
- What Actually Counts as a Small Business Loan Under Section 1071
- Section 1071 in 2026: What Lenders Need to Know About Small Business Lending Data
