A trio of federal regulators canceled next week’s National Interagency Community Reinvestment Conference amid growing concerns about the spread of coronavirus in the U.S.
The Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said on Thursday they would reschedule the event that had been set to take place in Denver from March 9 to 12.
The regulators “jointly made this decision out of an abundance of caution to help safeguard the health and well-being of the more than 1,300 registered conference participants,” they said in a joint statement that cited the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
The “planning team is working to confirm a date to reschedule the conference as soon as possible later this year,” the agencies said.
Esther George, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and Joseph Otting, the head of the OCC, were scheduled to speak.
The annual conference focuses on the implementation of the Community Reinvestment Act, or CRA, a 1977 law that requires depository institutions to meet the credit needs – including mortgages – of low- to moderate-income neighborhoods.
Concerns about the spread of the virus have caused a raft of conference cancellations across the U.S., including the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society’s conference scheduled for March 9 to 13 in Orlando, where President Donald Trump was slated to speak.
The American Bar Association also canceled its National Institute on White Collar Crime, scheduled for March 11 to 13 in San Diego, and Facebook canceled its Global Marketing Summit in San Francisco from March 9 to 12.
Congress approved an $8.3 billion emergency spending bill on Thursday to fight the virus after the number of U.S. cases swelled to 210 with 12 people dying from the virus.
