Bank Enterprise Award Program

The Department of the Treasury is issuing a revised interim rule implementing the Bank Enterprise Award (BEA) Program administered by the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (Fund). The purpose of the BEA Program is to encourage insured depository institutions to increase their level of activities in the form of loans, investments, services, and technical assistance within distressed communities and to provide financial assistance to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) through grants, stock purchases, loans, deposits, and other forms of financial and technical assistance. The BEA Program rewards participating insured depository institutions for increasing their activities in economically distressed communities and investing in CDFIs. The revisions contain a number of changes which clarify current requirements, but do not change them. This rule also simplifies current requirements and updates various references, and contains one revision that the Fund believes will generally inure to the benefit of insured depository institutions. Specifically, the revision clarifies the measured value of renewed loans and rolled over time deposits to include the entire amount of the renewed loans and rolled over deposits. However, in order to facilitate implementation of the BEA program regulations by participating insured depository institutions, the complete text of the regulations, as amended, is published by this interim rule.