Banks Face Shake-Up of Low-Income Lending Rules

WASHINGTON—Top U.S. banking regulators struggled for more than five years to update anti-redlining rules aimed at making banks lend more in lower-income communities. On Tuesday, they completed a revamp of them for the era of online banking.

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act sought to end banks’ historical practice of denying or limiting financial services in minority neighborhoods. The current rules, which are nearly 30 years old, generally require banks to serve everyone in the communities surrounding their branches, including lower-income people.