Findings

The Congress finds the following: (1) Trends in bank closures and consolidation have left many communities without access to banking services and disproportionately impact underserved rural and urban communities. (2) De novo bank formation has slowed significantly following the financial crisis. (3) A November 2019 report by the Federal Reserve System found that 44 counties in the United States were deeply affected by trends in bank closures and consolidation, meaning that the counties had fewer than 10 branches in 2012 and lost not less than 50 percent of them by 2017. (4) 89 percent of the deeply affected counties described in paragraph (3) were rural. (5) Rural counties deeply affected by branch closures had higher poverty rates and lower median incomes, and a higher share of their population were African-American compared to all rural communities.