Press Release

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services Helps Lenders Address Growing CRA and Fair Lending Obligations Accompanying New Census Data

MINNEAPOLIS – Jan. 25, 2012 – Wolters Kluwer Financial Services has enhanced its CRA and Fair Lending solutions to help financial institutions address their growing compliance obligations as a result of the 2010 U.S. Census. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) recently announced that institutions will be required to use the new census tract information in 2012 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) data collection. 

Deciphering the vast amount of new census information will be critical for financial institutions in continuing to ensure fair and anti-discriminatory lending requirements are met. For example, nearly 40 Metropolitian Stastical Areas (MSAs), or about one in ten of the 442 MSA/MDs nationwide, has had a 10 percent or greater increase in the number of tracts considered low or moderate income. Institutions lending in these areas must modify their lending practices in order to remain in compliance with CRA. 

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services has updated both its CRA and Fair Lending solutions to include the latest census tract income categorizations, boundary definitions, and demographic data. All of this information helps institutions establish the critical benchmarks they require for effective CRA and fair lending compliance going forward.

In addition, Fair Lending Wiz now includes a Race Proxy functionality. The new functionality helps institutions to make a determination of an applicant’s race when this information is not available in the loan file. The feature further extends the fair lending solution’s current ability to provide gender and minority proxies. These proxies help improve the quality of HMDA loan data to detect potential problems that may contribute to discriminatory loans.

“We continue to strengthen our CRA and fair lending solutions to help our customers address new requirements as they occur and regulators’ intensified scrutiny of their lending practices,” said Heather Czermak, general manager of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services’ Consumer Compliance and Financial Crime Control business lines. “By leveraging our solutions, the comprehensive information within, and our knowledgeable professional services team, institutions have everything they need to help ensure they are in compliance right away.”

About Wolters Kluwer Financial Services

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services is a comprehensive regulatory compliance and risk management business that helps financial organizations manage operational, compliance and financial risk and reporting, and improve efficiency and effectiveness across their enterprise. The organization’s prominent brands include: FRSGlobal, ARC Logics for Financial Services, PCi, Compliance Resource Network, Bankers Systems, VMP® Mortgage Solutions, AppOne®, GainsKeeper®, Capital Changes, NILS, AuthenticWeb™ and Uniform Forms™. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services supports its global customers with more than 30 offices in 20 countries and is a leading worldwide provider of compliance and risk management solutions for the financial services industry, serving more than 15,000 banking, insurance and securities customers across the globe. Wolters Kluwer Financial Services is part of Wolters Kluwer, a leading global information services and publishing company with annual revenues of (2010) €3.6 billion ($4.7 billion) and approximately 19,000 employees worldwide. Please visit our website for more information.