This could be to the benefit of credit deserts—those perennially underserved rural areas or small metropolitan areas that may not have a bank branch or, if they do, may not constitute a major market for purposes of banks’ CRA evaluations.
These were the insights from the ECB Strategy Review – the Review we concluded when the COVID-19 pandemic was just about starting to recede due to increasing availability of vaccines, and when the idea of a full-scale war in Europe was deemed to be more of a fantasy than a real possibility. Today we live the 107th day of war in Ukraine.