The Partners for Rural Transformation are happy to submit our comment to the CDFI Fund, U.S. Treasury. In 2020, Rural serving financial institutions received a decreased percentage of capital investment from banks (31%) than their urban counterparts (51%). This makes the CDFI Fund FA and TA awards much more critical to rural-serving CDFIs dedicated to moving capital through persistently poor regions that have faced decades of disinvestment. To translate these percentages into numbers, CDFIs serving persistently poor and rural communities acquired $213m in bank-borrowed funds. In contrast, urban and metropolitan-serving CDFIs received $4.6b in bank-borrowed funds in 2020. This is why CDFI Fund FA/TA awards are that much more crucial to rural-serving CDFIs and communities.
Please see our full comment here to read the recommendations to maximize the impact of the CDFI Fund NACA Program dollars in places that can leverage them the most. Thank you for the opportunity to comment, and your time, and consideration.