Nine major US banks denied services over customers' politics and religion, regulator finds

Jonathan Gould, the Comptroller of the Currency, led a review of banking decisions that ran through nearly 100,000 complaints and approximately 420,000 pages of bank documents. Its conclusion was that nine of the largest US banks had maintained policies between 2020 and September 2025 that denied or restricted financial services because of customers’ political or religious beliefs, or their lawful business activities.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released the report on October 14, 2026, following an executive order signed by President Trump last year directing federal banking regulators to investigate politically motivated debanking and prevent it.

The banks named were JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank and BMO Bank. The OCC said they generally lacked defined, measurable benchmarks and objective criteria grounded in risk when judging the reputational risk of particular customer relationships.

It also found blanket policies that excluded whole industries, including oil and gas, coal mining and firearms. The regulator acknowledged that it could not comprehensively measure the extent of debanking or its costs to affected customers.

At PNC in 2021, a media company was declined a line of credit after employees raised concerns about its conservative owners. One employee wrote that the owners’ public views were “very contrary to PNC's beliefs/values.”

Capital One declined to serve organisations supporting abortion rights, a public education group whose political arm endorsed Democrats, and a gun rights organisation. JPMorgan Chase repeatedly turned down commercial services for a conservative retailer between 2021 and 2023, and employees later changed internal records to remove references to the retailer’s political orientation.

Bank of America sought to restart a relationship with a private prison customer after President Trump returned to office, despite little change in the reputational risks involved, the OCC found. TD Bank raised concerns about an anti-immigration nonprofit’s views while considering its application for a federal pandemic relief loan. The group withdrew the application because it did not qualify for the programme.

Gould said the findings provided “irrefutable evidence that the nation's largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses.” He said: “Fair access to financial services is not a mantra — it is a mandate.”

JPMorgan Chase said its policies prohibit political or religious discrimination and that it has improved its practices after past incidents. Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, was sued by President Trump in January, alongside the bank, over an allegation that Trump’s accounts were closed for political reasons. JPMorgan denies the allegation.