Dime Community Bank Earns “Outstanding” Rating on Community Reinvestment Act Exam

HAUPPAUGE, N.Y., July 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. (NASDAQ: DCOM), (the “Company” or “Dime”), the parent company of Dime Community Bank (the “Bank”), announced today the Bank has received an overall “Outstanding” Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (“CRA”) rating from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (“FRBNY”) for the exam in January 2022.

The CRA requires banks to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including Low-to-Moderate Income (“LMI”) neighborhoods. The FRBNY referenced multiple achievements in its CRA evaluation of the Bank, emphasizing Outstanding lending and service performance. Select highlights included:

• The Bank was a leader in making community development loans and made use of innovative and flexible lending practices to meet credit needs;
• FRBNY gave additional weight to the Bank’s CRA loans during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the acute credit needs of businesses;
• The Bank originated Paycheck Protection Program loans designed to provide a direct incentive to small businesses adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to keep their workers on the payroll; and
• The Bank was also acknowledged as a leader in providing community development services and for significant use of innovative and/or complex investments to support community development.

“We are very proud to achieve an Outstanding rating for our CRA performance,” said Kevin O’Connor, the Bank’s Chief Executive Officer. “As a community bank we take pride in the hard work of our employees and the efforts of the Bank to lend, invest and serve our communities - especially given the myriad of pressing needs during the pandemic.”

The CRA exam measures the availability of bank branches and services in LMI neighborhoods, as well as the bank's commitment to offering community development services. The depth of a bank's community development lending and distribution of small business and home mortgage loans in communities they serve is also assessed. The CRA rating reflects the company’s CRA performance, not its financial condition.

About the Company

Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. is the holding company for Dime Community Bank, a New York State-chartered trust company with over $12.0 billion in assets and the number one deposit market share among community banks on Greater Long Island ⁽¹⁾.

⁽¹⁾ Aggregate deposit market share for Kings, Queens, Nassau & Suffolk counties for community banks less than $20 billion in assets.

Dime Community Bancshares, Inc.
Daniel Delehanty
Director of CRA and Fair Lending
Phone: 631 537 1000, Ext.7540
Email: Daniel.Delehanty@dime.com