During the period starting mid 1980s and till about 2005, the regulatory focus shifted to consolidation and profitability of banks. Since social initiatives, as argued earlier, were not integrated with business plans and were thought of as non-viable, they were the first casualties. A number of rural branches were closed down or merged or were shifted to semiurban areas as they were considered unviable.
In addition, consumer compliance webinars have provided a forum for the Federal Reserve to discuss emerging consumer compliance issues and to answer questions from webinar participants directly.3 These initiatives have been so successful that a planning group is studying options for leveraging these efforts in a coordinated, national initiative to improve communication of relevant information to community banks supervised by the Federal Reserve.