America’s banking regulator has accused the country’s nine largest national banks of turning away customers over their politics, religion or lawful business activities — a finding that could reshape compliance expectations across corporate banking.
What the report found
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Treasury bureau that supervises national banks, released a 47-page review on Wednesday covering account decisions from 2020 through September 2025. Investigators examined nearly 100,000 customer complaints and roughly 420,000 pages of bank documents. Every one of the nine banks reviewed — including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo — had policies that could influence whether services were denied or restricted on the basis of political or religious beliefs, according to the report.
The report cites cases in which a payment processor closed merchant accounts after screening for terms such as “MAGA” or “America First”, and instances in which religious and conservative organisations lost access to banking services. It also records cases involving Democrat-aligned groups, and acknowledges that fraud and overdraft histories were legitimate reasons behind some closures.
Regulatory fallout ahead
The OCC stopped short of imposing penalties, but the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has opened an investigation covering the banks named in the report and others. For corporate finance teams, the episode is a warning that “reputation risk” — the catch-all justification banks used to screen customers — may itself become a regulatory liability. Many of the banks had already rewritten their policies in late 2023 and 2024 after states including Tennessee, Florida and Idaho passed fair-access laws, a shift the report describes as likely catalysed by those statutes.
Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould put the message bluntly: “Fair access to financial services is not a mantra — it is a mandate.” Executives should treat account-closure risk as a due-diligence item: know your bank’s policies, document adverse decisions and keep backup banking relationships ready. The episode lands as Goldman Sachs’s bullish call on global stocks lifted sentiment across financial shares and as a hot inflation print keeps rate expectations in flux — regulatory risk now travels alongside market risk. Full detail is available in the federal banking report.
