CRA Is a Revenue Driver. Most Banks Just Don't Know It Yet.
There's a perception that CRA is an obligation. A compliance checkbox. A cost center. Doug Schaffer from Woodforest National Bank and Camino Smith from Banner Bank see it differently. The banks that treat CRA as an extension of their business strategy are building quietly profitable programs and scaling them.
As Doug puts it: I don't believe you can have mission without margin. And the returns are great. That's the secret punchline.
Recorded at CBA Live 2026, this episode covers:
- Why CRA is foundational to safety and soundness, not a threat to it
- Using CRA as an R&D arm to test and scale new business
- The CDFI partnership ecosystem and how banks plug into it
- Opportunity Zones made permanent and what that unlocks
- The push to raise the public welfare investment cap from 15% to 20%
- CRA modernization, rescission, and going back to the 1995 rule
- Why the best CRA programs embed early in the customer life cycle
- The catalytic capital that makes the rest of the deal work
If you run CRA, community development, or strategy at a bank, this conversation reframes how you think about the work.
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