Professor Brescia Launches Bank Report Card with Yale Team

Professor Raymond H. Brescia was part of a team that measured how well banks in the city responded to consumer and community needs, with a focus on home loans. The report card, developed with the City of New Haven and the Community and Economic Development Clinic at Yale Law School, will be unveiled at a press conference at the New Haven, Conn., City Hall on Oct. 2.

Total scores for the reports cards were based on two categories: home loans, worth 30 points, and banking products and accessibility, worth 70 points. Of the 11 banks measured in New Haven, scores ranged from 53 to 74 out of a possible 100.

Professor Brescia helped develop the New Haven Community Impact Report Card (CIRC) to apply to communities around the country, thereby better informing consumers of available banking options at a local level. Recent polls suggest that consumer confidence in American banks is at a 40-year low.

With City of New Haven Mayor John DeStefano Jr., Professor Brescia also authored a piece on this topic for The Huffington Post titled "Scoring the Banks: The Community Impact Record Card as a New Tool for Measuring Bank Performance in Meeting Community Needs."

A frequent author and media resource on issues such as the sub-prime mortgage crises, banking practices, and legal housing issues, Professor Brescia also co-authored the article “Scoring the Banks: Building a Behaviorally Informed Community Impact Report Card for Financial Institutions” with Yale law student Sonia Steinway for publication in a forthcoming edition of the Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law.

Professor Brescia was a visiting professor at Yale Law School, his alma mater, for the spring 2012 semester.