FFIEC releases file specifications for 2020 CRA reporting (plus the latest edits)

File specifications for 2020 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) reporting are now available, the umbrella group for federal financial institution regulators said Wednesday.

In a release, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) said the file specifications for the CRA reporting describe the format used when sending automated CRA data to any one of the federal banking agencies.

The 2020 specifications, the FFIEC said, also contain new edits. The exam council said the edits are modified each year to include new data fields (if any) and enhance data quality. The council urged users to be sure to use the appropriate year’s edits to validate their CRA data submission.

Generally, those edits are distributed among three types: syntactical (S), validity (V), and quality (Q). “Each type represents the severity of the error and should be thoroughly understood to ensure that the data are accurate and reported in their entirety,” the FFIEC said. “The CRA edits have been developed to ensure an error-free submission of the CRA data that are required to be reported by the regulations implementing the Community Reinvestment Act.”

FFIEC CRA file specifications