Company: WTFCN
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001015328-25-000093
Chunk: 31

Company: WINTRUST FINANCIAL CORP
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 31
---
 also requires that all institutions publicly disclose their CRA ratings. Each of our subsidiary banks received a “satisfactory” or better rating from the OCC on its most recent CRA performance evaluation.

18

On October 24, 2023, the Federal Reserve, FDIC, and OCC issued a final rule to amend their regulations implementing the CRA. The rule materially revises the current CRA framework, including the assessment areas in which a bank is evaluated to include activities associated with online and mobile banking, the tests used to evaluate the bank in its assessment areas, new methods of calculating credit for lending, investment and service activities, and additional data collection and reporting requirements. The rule is expected to result in a significant increase in the thresholds for large banks to receive “Outstanding” ratings in the future. The final rule was expected to take effect April 1, 2024, with most of its provisions becoming applicable on January 1, 2026. Compliance with data and disclosure reporting requirements will not be required until 2027. Several banking industry groups filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the CRA final rule, in which they argued that the federal banking agencies exceeded their statutory authority in adopting the CRA final rule. In March 2024, a federal judge granted an injunction to extend the CRA final rule’s effective date, originally set for April 1, 2024. The effective date will be extended each day the injunction remains in place, pending the resolution of the lawsuit.

Compliance with Consumer Protection Laws

Our subsidiary banks and some other operating subsidiaries are subject to a variety of federal and state statutes and regulations designed to protect consumers. The CFPB has broad rulemaking authority over a wide range of federal consumer protection laws that apply to banks and other providers of financial products and services, including the authority to prohibit “unfair, deceptive or abusive” acts and practices, but examination and supervision is carried out by each subsidiary bank’s primary federal banking agency and, where applicable, state banking agency, not the CFPB. In addition, the Dodd-Frank Act authorizes state attorneys general and other state officials to enforce consumer protection rules issued by the CFPB. State authorities have recently increased their focus on and enforcement of consumer protection rules.

Interest and other charges collected or contracted for by banks are subject to state usury laws and federal laws concerning interest rates. 

Loan operations are also subject to federal laws and regulations applicable to credit transactions, such as:

Issued by the CFPB:    

•The federal Truth-In-Lending Act