| On Fifth Third Bid for
Comerica CRA Protest Now Fed Asks
of Branches and Direct Express
by
Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book
Substack
SDNY/SOUTH
BRONX, Nov 18 – As US
bank regulators loosen rules -
including the FDIC moving to
eliminate public comment
altogether on branch expansion
applications - now more big
banks are moving to get
bigger.
On
October 6, Fifth Third
announced it will apply to buy
damaged Comerica Bank. On
October 8-9, it was opposed,
to the Fed and OCC. On
November 10, after a
contemptuous response by Fifth
Third's Kala Gibson, Fair
Finance Watch spread the fight
spread to five more states.
On
November 18 the Federal
Reserve put 15 multi-part
questions to Fifth Third,
ranging from branch closures
and the Community Reinvestment
Act to potential shareholder
litigation and, at last, the
Direct Express program. Inner
City Press is putting the
Fed's question letter on its
DocumentCloud here,
as it will Fifth Third
responses - after FOIA if
necesary, though 53 is
supposed to sent them to Fair
Finance Watch.
Their
application to the Fed
discloses five states they are
filing with: Michigan, Texas,
California, Florida and
Arizona. On November 10 Inner
City Press filed with all
five.
Fair
Finance Watch filed:
Fair
Finance Watch has long been
concerned about Fifth
Third. Fair Finance
Watch has reviewed the
just-released 2024 Home
Mortgage Disclosure Act data
of Fifth Third, not reviewed
in any Community Reinvestment
Act performance
evaluation.
In state
after state, Fifth Third for
African Americans has (many)
more denials than
originations, while the
opposite is true for white
borrows. The pattern is
striking, starting with two
states Fifth Third and
Comerica overlap
in:
In
Michigan, the state Comerica
abandoned for Texas, Fifth
Third in 2024 denied 249
applications from African
Americans while making fewer,
only 177loans - while it made
fully 4189 loans to whites and
denied only 1688 applications.
This is disparate [there
are more states]
***
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