Nine major banks have been found to have engaged in debanking practices, according to a report by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The report aligns with President Trump’s order titled, “Guaranteeing Fair Banking For All Americans.” According to the order, “Bank regulators have used supervisory scrutiny and other influence over regulated banks to direct or otherwise encourage politicized or unlawful debanking activities.”
The banks involved in the report include JP Morgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank, and BMO Bank.
“The OCC is reviewing thousands of documents from 2020 to 2025 to evaluate whether bank policies or practices may have required, encouraged, or otherwise influenced the banks to deny or limit financial access to certain categories of customers or potential customers,” the report says, adding that it is also “reviewing nearly 100,000 consumer complaints from the OCC’s internal complaint database and from other government and third-party sources to identify potential instances of debanking.”
According to the report, banks placed certain restrictions on some industry sectors “based primarily on how it might appear to the public if the bank provided access to financial services to these sectors.” Industries facing restrictions included oil and gas development, coal mining, firearms, and others.
Some individuals faced restrictions as well, the report notes. “Certain banks, or lines of business within banks, went further than industry-specific restrictions and adopted policies that may have triggered a heightened review of customers or potential customers based on negative discussion of them in newspaper articles or other media sources,” the OCC wrote.
During his January video address to the WEF, President Trump criticized the debanking of conservatives. Specifically addressing Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, Trump said, “By the way, speaking of you, and you’ve done a fantastic job, but I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives because many conservatives complained that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank and that included a place called Bank of America.”
“They don’t take conservative business, and I don’t know if regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and [J.P. Morgan Chase CEO] Jamie [Dimon] and everybody, I hope you will open your banks to conservatives, because what you are doing is wrong,” he said.
