“So it is much more important to get reform right than to do it quickly,” she said.

Banks have long called the Community Reinvestment Act’s requirements, which mandate that they do some of their business in less wealthy areas, burdensome. Yet ignoring them is not an option. Banks that do not meet the requirements face heavy regulatory scrutiny and can have difficulty getting approval for mergers or expansions.

The F.D.I.C. and O.C.C.’s December proposal, which covers more than 200 pages, would give banks credit for making loans to hospitals and other large institutions that do not currently qualify. It would also allow banks to take credit for lending to relatively poor individuals, small businesses and borrowers in rural places even when they do not have a branch nearby.

The proposal would also do away with a detailed rubric for assessing banks’ activities, instead taking their total C.R.A.-related spending amounts as the starting point for evaluating their fulfillment of the law’s requirements. Regulators would then use other, smaller tests to determine whether each bank had met its overall requirement.

The Fed’s approach differs substantially. Retail banks would be evaluated under one test that would assess their record of providing loans and retail banking services in their area.

Larger banks would be evaluated under both a retail test, if they have retail activities, and a separate test, which would evaluate their record of providing community development loans, qualified investments and services.