Key Takeaways
- The OCC found all nine major banks maintained policies restricting access to financial services.
- JPMorgan’s Wepay closed a Trump merchandise seller’s account in February 2021.
- The OCC found banking restrictions affecting firearms, energy and digital asset businesses.
Selling Donald Trump merchandise, running a conservative media company, or operating a perfectly legal firearms business apparently carried an unexpected financial hazard: losing access to banking. On Wednesday, Oct. 14, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) took the wraps off an investigation into America’s nine largest national banks.
The OCC revealed that every institution maintained policies capable of restricting customers over political beliefs, religious affiliations, or lawful commercial activities. The findings cover the span from 2020 through September 2025 and draw on nearly 100,000 complaints and approximately 420,000 pages of internal documents. The regulator’s conclusion raises uncomfortable questions about who gets to hold a bank account.
Banking Giants Face Scrutiny Over Political and Religious Bias
In a comprehensive report, the OCC examined JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank, and BMO Bank. Its report found that broad reputation risk policies sometimes substituted subjective judgments for measurable financial concerns.
“The banks largely lacked clear and measurable standards and objective risk-based criteria for assessing the reputation risks of customers or prospective customers,” the report disclosed. Additionally, Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould came out swinging in the agency’s accompanying press release.
“Today’s report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses,” Gould declared. One particularly revealing example involved JPMorgan’s payment subsidiary, Wepay, which terminated an account selling merchandise supporting Trump and the Make America Great Again movement in February 2021.
An employee explained the decision internally. “We closed their account due to violating our Wepay’s Terms of Services (MAGA and Trump-related items are part of it),” the individual cited in the report states.
PNC’s Internal Emails Reveal Another Debanking Flashpoint
The American financial institution PNC declined to extend credit to a media company whose owners maintained prominent conservative political and religious associations. An internal employee questioned whether the bank should associate with the company at all.
“I think it becomes really difficult to justify aligning ourselves with a company whose owners have built very public personas around opinions very contrary to PNC’s beliefs/values,” the employee said. The investigation also identified an instance involving an organization whose political activities supported Democratic candidates, demonstrating that politically motivated restrictions were not confined to one party.
Beyond political affiliations, regulators found industry-specific restrictions affecting firearms manufacturers, coal companies, oil and gas businesses, detention facilities, tobacco companies, and digital asset activities.
The report put the consequences plainly:
“Policies adopting industry-specific restrictions had real-world consequences.”
Some banks imposed internal social standards on otherwise lawful firearms businesses, including restrictions involving magazine capacity and sales to customers younger than 21. Smaller businesses sometimes faced financing obstacles while established companies received exceptions.
Wealthy Clients Received Exceptions as Ordinary Customers Lost Access
The OCC report also uncovered a curious contradiction in how banks assessed reputation risk. Some customers lost access to services over unfavorable publicity or unverified allegations, while certain wealthy clients retained banking relationships despite attracting more serious negative attention.
The findings suggest reputation risk was not always applied consistently, particularly when valuable banking relationships were involved. The regulator also acknowledged that it could not establish the total number of affected customers or calculate the complete financial damage.
OCC Warns Banking Reforms Might Not Go Far Enough
Although banks have revised certain policies, regulators discovered that reputation risk considerations sometimes survived under alternative labels, including brand risk and franchise risk. Gould warned that voluntary changes might not be sufficient. “Notwithstanding certain efforts by the largest banks to rein in these practices, I am not confident that they will be enough,” he said.
The OCC has already eliminated reputation risk considerations from bank examinations and is weighing additional supervisory changes. “Fair access to financial services is not a mantra—it is a mandate,” Gould concluded.
For the nine banking giants, the heat is on. The more difficult question is whether eliminating controversial policies will also eliminate the discretion that allowed those policies to influence customer decisions in the first place.
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