No. To receive and/or maintain the Native American CDFI designation, an Applicant must also meet and maintain the requirements for CDFI Certification.

An entity that is certified under the new Certification policies, released in December 2023, is required to submit the new version of the ACR according to the submission date shown on their ACR Reporting Schedule in AMIS. The submission date will be 180 days after the FYE of its most recently completed Fiscal Year (FY) unless directed otherwise by the CDFI Fund.

Yes, an entity that is certified under the new Certification Application, published in December 2023, can lose its certification based on its ACR submission. The entity’s answers in the ACR submission may show that the entity is no longer fulfilling all of the requirements of Certification and therefore should not have its Certification status reaffirmed. For example, if the Target Market activity thresholds are not met based on the submitted and certified Transaction Level Report (TLR) results, then the entity is not eligible for CDFI Certification renewal.

No, entities must complete and submit their TLR before they can submit the new ACR. There are data fields in the new ACR whose value is based on information in the TLR, so the TLR must be submitted and certified for those new ACR data fields to be populated with values.

All entities are required to complete the Source of Investment Capital section and the Contributed Operating Revenue section. Each section is required to have at least one entry. Guidance has been added to the new ACR Instruction document to provide examples of how a regulated financial institution might complete the sections.

The CDFI Fund will provide a crosswalk between the data fields from the various call report forms and their respective data field in the new ACR guidance materials. The applicable call report forms include:

For transactions closed prior to 1/4/2023, the entity should use the 2011-2015 ACS data file available here.

The 3-year Target Market percentage will be calculated by assessing an entity’s cumulative Target Market activity over three full fiscal years (the most recently completed fiscal year being reported on in the ACR and the two preceding fiscal years) divided by their total lending activity over the same time period to assess whether the Target Market activity thresholds for dollar amount and count of transactions have been met. It is not an average of the Target Market activity percentages for each of the three years.

• Entities completing the new Certification Application for the first time are required to complete the abbreviated TLR. The TLR is required to be submitted and certified prior to submission of the Certification Application. Once Certified, these entities are required to submit the abbreviated version of the TLR on an annual basis as part of their ACR submission unless they receive a financial assistance award which has a full-length TLR reporting requirement.

No, all entities are not required to complete the TLR’s Financial Services section. The Financial Services section should only be completed by those depository institutions that are using eligible Financial Services activity to meet the required Target Market Activity thresholds. For such purposes, the Financial Services section measures the total percentage of unique depository account holders who are members of one or more eligible Target Market(s).