Fed Rubberstamps Isabella Bank's Purchase of Grand River Ignoring HMDA and Dissing FOIA

Fed Rubberstamps Isabella Bank's Purchase of Grand River Ignoring HMDA and Dissing FOIA by Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Book Substack SOUTH BRONX / SDNY, Oct 5 – The Federal Reserve Board approved Isabella Bank Corporation's acquisition of Grand River Commerce, Inc. and Grand River Bank on October 5 (FRB Order No. 2026-26), creating a $2.7 billion Michigan bank holding company.  The order's handling of the one commenter who objected, Fair Finance Watch, shows how little the Board needed to say to get there.  The disputed numbers go unresolved. The comment used 2025 HMDA data to allege that Isabella Bank made fewer home loans to African American borrowers than to white borrowers in Michigan and denied Black applicants at a higher rate, and that Grand River Bank made no home loans to African American borrowers at all.  Isabella answered that the commenter relied on "isolated HMDA data without any analysis or context." Well here it is, from FFW's comment: "In 2025 in Michigan, Isabella Bank made fully 636 mortgage loans to whites, while denying only 134 - meanwhile it made only THREE loans to African Americans, while denying fully SIX.  This is extremely disparate.     "Grand River Bank in Michigan in 2025 made 41 mortgage loans to whites and NONE to African Americans. Combined they would have $2.6 billion in assets - in the zone of banks which the FDIC and OCC (and for now not the Fed) seek to deregulate for CRA." The Fed order recites both sides and moves on. It never says which numbers it credits, never states a single HMDA figure, and never says whether the disparity exists. It explains that public data lack things like credit scores, so the Board "considers additional information not available to the public," but it reports no finding from that information. It says the banks' fair lending exams "included reviews" of compliance, not what those reviews found.  The CRA exams predate the lending at issue. Isabella Bank's April 2026 evaluation reviewed loans from 2023 and 2024. Grand River's July 2025 evaluation reviewed 2024. Neither looked at the 2025 lending the commenter raised. Isabella's "High Satisfactory" Lending Test rating also rests partly on two measures examiners rated only "adequate": the geographic distribution of its loans, including in low- and moderate-income areas, and their distribution among borrowers of different incomes. Those are the measures closest to the commenter's concern.  Hearing denied, again. The Board denied the hearing request in a boilerplace footnote because it "does not identify disputed issues of fact that are material to the Board's decision." The same order spends three pages recounting a dispute over what the data show. It is the formula the Board also used in approving BancFirst's Oklahoma acquisition.  Management findings rest on withheld exhibits  The Board found that the combined organization's proposed directors and executives have the necessary experience and that Isabella's integration plans are sound. The exhibits on management, strategy, and integration timelines that bear on those findings are the ones the Board withheld in full from Fair Finance Watch's FOIA request (FOIA-2026-00787, appeal pending). The order does not discuss management interlocks.  The Board's position in court  In the Enova FOIA lawsuit (), Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger reviewed the Board's eight-page letter in camera and found its redactions "far too overbroad." Four days later the Board asked him to vacate the ruling, arguing for the first time that he lacked authority to decide the case. Its own counsel had indicated at the September 10 conference that she expected him to decide it. He vacated on that jurisdictional ground, wrote that he had "little doubt" the Board would not have objected had it won, and invited either side to seek relief from Judge Torres. Inner City Press has asked Judge Torres to enforce the ruling or review the letter herself. We await a ruling.   The Board is therefore resisting review of its redactions in one forum while approving a merger in another on findings drawn from material it will not release. It did not join the OCC and FDIC proposal to raise the large-bank CRA threshold to $10 billion, and Isabella, at $2.2 billion, still got a full three-test exam. Whether the Fed follows is not answered by this order. Watch this site *** Your support means a lot. As little as $5 a month helps keep us going and grants you access to exclusive bonus material on our Patreon page. Click here to become a patron. Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com Mail: Box 130222, Chinatown Station, NY NY 10013 Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.  Copyright 2006-2026 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com