OCC says the nine largest banks it supervises had policies that could deny customers service over politics or religion

All nine of the largest national banks overseen by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had policies between 2020 and September 2025 that may have led them to deny or limit services to customers because of their political or religious beliefs or their lawful lines of business, the regulator said in a report released on Wednesday, Oct. 14.

What the regulator found

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reviewed the nine largest national banks it supervises: JPMorgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank and BMO Bank. The review was ordered under President Donald Trump's Aug. 7, 2025, executive order on "fair banking," and it covered the period from 2020 to September 2025.

The agency's central finding concerns "reputation risk," the worry that serving a particular customer could damage a bank's public image. The OCC said the banks' reputation risk policies lacked clear standards and objective, risk-based criteria, and that applying them disadvantaged some customers because of their political, religious or social views or their lawful business activities.

The report also lists industries that banks restricted through public and nonpublic policies. They include oil and gas exploration in the Arctic, coal mining and coal-fired power plants, firearms and ammunition, detention facilities, tobacco and e-cigarettes, and digital assets.

The OCC said it examined nearly 100,000 complaints, tested hundreds of individual bank decisions and received about 50,000 documents running to about 420,000 pages. It also said it could not measure, on a comprehensive basis, how much debanking took place or what it cost customers, and that the number of times a bank is named in the report does not reflect its share of problematic decisions.

Cases the report describes

In February 2021, WePay, a JPMorgan payments subsidiary, closed the account of a merchant selling Trump and "Make America Great Again" merchandise after deciding the goods promoted "hate, violence, or racial intolerance." The report says JPMorgan employees did not give input on that closure. Separately, JPMorgan declined several times between 2021 and 2023 to provide commercial services to a retailer with a conservative political leaning, and an employee later edited internal records of those decisions so the language read more neutrally, according to the OCC.

PNC turned down a line of credit for a media company in late 2021 after employees cited a speech by one of its owners, described internally as a conservative political commentator. Citibank refused to help a firearms company with an initial public offering because the company's gun-sale policies did not match the bank's own standards. BMO kept a customer that made empty firearm magazines, part of a family of companies it had served for decades, but set a quarterly check that its tactical products stay below 30% of total sales.

In February 2021, TD weighed a Paycheck Protection Program loan for a nonprofit that promoted anti-immigration positions, and its business line said it was "not comfortable with moving forward." The nonprofit withdrew its application because it did not meet the program's requirements, the report says.

How banks responded

JPMorgan told CNBC that its policies prohibit discrimination based on political or religious views, that WePay's process "did not meet our expectations," and that it fixed the problem and has since shut the business down.

The Bank Policy Institute, which represents universal, regional and major foreign banks in the United States, said in a statement that the industry supports "clear and consistent standards that promote access while maintaining sound risk management." A BMO spokesperson referred questions to that statement, the Financial Post reported.

No penalties, but more rules are possible

The OCC did not announce fines or enforcement actions alongside the report. All nine banks told the agency they had reassessed how they use reputation risk. Some now bar it from being the only reason to close or refuse an account. One bank scrapped its reputation risk policy and committee, while others renamed the concept "franchise" or "brand" risk.

The regulator was not persuaded those changes are enough. It said it cannot say with confidence that current policies would keep banks from returning to the practices it described, and that no bank has fully and publicly acknowledged its past debanking decisions.

"Notwithstanding certain efforts by the largest banks to rein in these practices, I am not confident that they will be enough," Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould said in the agency's release.

Why it matters for the banks

The OCC said it is considering further rulemaking to stop banks from discriminating against customers over their political or religious beliefs and to curb the role of reputation risk, including reliance on outside groups' opinions, in banking decisions. Since September 2025 it has also weighed a bank's record on debanking when it reviews licensing filings, which include mergers, and in Community Reinvestment Act examinations. The report notes that one bank, in a recent merger application, promised the OCC it would restrict a customer's access only on the basis of an individual, objective, risk-based analysis.

The agency is separately studying whether banks' anti-money-laundering compliance has itself led to debanking. The report came a day after the OCC imposed a $750 million civil money penalty on Bank of America over deficient anti-money-laundering controls, which the regulator called the largest in its history. That case is separate from the debanking review.