As bank regulators take a close look at modernizing the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) through a series of hearings and public comment period, we’re walking you through some key reasons why CRA must be updated. Last week, we explained how assessment areas don’t fully capture where a bank does business (see the discussion at Huffington Post). Today we’ll explain how CRA applies only to a fraction of the financial industry and why communities need a broader CRA to ensure that all financial institutions are offering safe and sustainable products where they do business.

You can still make your voice heard on the need to improve the Community Reinvestment Act, even if you were not able to attend last week's hearing on CRA modernization at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, consumers will now have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to monitor and regulate potentially abusive financial products. It will be equally important, however, to ensure that all communities have equitable access to responsible and fairly priced products and to eliminate the bad ones. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has been an effective tool to encourage the provision of affordable financial services, but it must be updated to reflect the realities of today’s rapidly-changing financial landscape.

People with disabilities, advocates, and government officials recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) at the White House. While acknowledging that much progress has been made, participants agreed there is still a long way to go to achieve inclusion and opportunities for the one in five U.S. residents who have disabilities—that’s 54 million people, including 7 million who receive federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits.

As Woodstock President Dory Rand noted, there is still much left to be done to ensure a fair and equitable financial system, even though the Dodd-Frank Act is now law. One major step is to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) so that all financial institutions are serving the entirety of communities in which they do business. The Chicago area has an opportunity to influence this process on August 12, when the Federal Reserve will be holding a hearing to consider CRA modernization. It is critical for regulators to hear from a large variety of organizations about why we must ensure that good products are available in every community – including low-wealth communities and communities of color.

Now that President Obama has signed the Dodd-Frank Act (DFA) into law, what’s next? The media are currently obsessed with whom the President will select as the first director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (we agree it must be a strong CFPB director with a pro-consumer track record), but there is much more on the horizon.