EARN YOUR CRA CERTIFIED PROFESSIONAL DESIGNATION

Benefits of the CRACP Designation

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is the most misunderstood consumer compliance regulation and its often added into compliance officers job responsibilities without any formal CRA training. CRA Today not only offers comprehensive CRA training, it also offers a rigorous certification program so all CRA practitioners can shore up their skills and are prepared to effectively run a CRA program in banks both small and large.

The CRA Certified Professional (CRACP) designation signifies that the CRA practitioner has a solid understanding on how to run an effective CRA program steeped in industry best practices, as well as many other attributes:

The exam will be divided into two sections. Section one of the exam will consist of 40 multiple-choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank questions. Questions can be marked and returned to at a later point in the exam, if time permits. In other words, within the time limit, you can go back and revisit your answers to ensure you are confident with them before submitting the exam for scoring. You will be given a maximum of two hours to complete this portion of the exam. You will know immediately after taking this portion of the exam if you have successfully passed section one with at least 80% accuracy.

Upon successfully passing section one of the exam, you will receive a second email within two business days with the details for you to complete section two which is narrative based. Since elements of the CRA can be subjective, being able to demonstrate your ability to blend quantitative and qualitative elements into documenting your community development activities is an essential skill in running an effective CRA program. Section two of the exam aims to evaluate this aptitude and your readiness to defend community development activities during critical moments like a CRA regulatory compliance examination. Narrative answers that fail to adequately demonstrate this skill will be peer reviewed by a member of CRA Today's Advisory Committee to ensure proper grading for certification purposes. Exam results for section two will be available within 14 calendar days.

Exam Cancellation or Rescheduling

If you decide not to take the exam, a full refund will be issued if you have not officially started the exam with your exam approval code. Once you receive your exam approval code (this will be emailed once you are approved to proceed after your pre-qualification factors have been validated), you must start the exam within a 30-day window and you must also complete section one and section two within a 30-day window.

Exam Retakes

It is highly recommended that you take the certification exam after you have had ample time to prepare as there is a $100 fee to retake the exam.

After successfully completing the CRACP Examination you will be required to complete thirty (30) hours of continuing education credits, specific to CRA every three years to maintain your certification. Professional development classes, conferences, workshops from industry leaders like the ABA, ICBA, etc will be accepted if they are CRA specific. CRA Today also offers many options via workshops and the CRA Hub to make it easy to meet this continuing education threshold.

You will be prompted to submit your continuing education credits 30 days prior to your certification lapse as a reminder. To start the recertification process, an annual recertification fee of $295 will be collected prior to validating your eligibility. The standard turnaround time to validate the requirements for recertification will be 14 days.