OCC says the nine largest banks ran debanking policies for five years; CFPB opens its own front

What the OCC found

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a report finding that all nine of the largest national banks it supervises maintained policies between 2020 and September 2025 that restricted access to financial services based on customers' political, religious, or social views. The agency said it conducted the supervisory review under the President's Executive Order "Guaranteeing Fair Access to Banking for All Americans," and built the report on nearly 100,000 complaints to OCC-regulated institutions plus roughly 50,000 documents — about 420,000 pages — from the banks about their policies, procedures, practices, and individual customer decisions. m:…0085

The report's core finding, per the OCC, is that broad "reputation risk" policies — which lacked clear standards and objective, risk-based criteria — disadvantaged certain Americans based on their political, religious, or social views or their lawful business activities. The agency said banks kept policies restricting sectors including oil and gas, coal mining and coal-fired plants, firearms manufacturers and retailers, detention facilities, tobacco, and digital assets. In one instance the agency cited, a bank denied a firearms business help with an initial public offering because the company's policies on lawful firearms sales did not align with the bank's own standards; coal-financing restrictions were, the OCC said, driven by concerns about negative headlines and public protests rather than financial risk. m:…0085 m:…2005

Gould's answer: reputation risk is out

Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould discussed the findings at a press conference in Lexington, Kentucky, alongside U.S. Congressman Andy Barr. He told reporters: "Banks should not be denying customers for activities protected by the constitution of the United States." He also said the OCC has eliminated reputation risk from its supervisory framework — the direct policy response to the report's central finding. m:…2005 m:…0085

The OCC said it will assess further changes to the regulatory and supervisory framework for the largest banks to reduce the likelihood of the practices recurring, and that it is considering actions to prevent banks from discriminating against customers or prospective customers on the basis of political or religious beliefs. Those are stated intentions for now — the report documents the past five years; the remedies are still being designed. m:…0085

The CFPB opens a second front

The same day, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced a new initiative aimed at debanking, explicitly tied to "the protection of constitutionally protected rights in financial services." The bureau framed the program as a continuation of the administration's fight against debanking — its release says the initiative will "advance President Trump's fight against the debanking of businesses and individuals" — and said it would focus on instances of debanking that remained unaddressed by the OCC, effectively extending the crackdown beyond the nine large banks the OCC reviewed. m:…9092

Read together, the two announcements look like a coordinated division of labor — the OCC diagnoses the problem inside the biggest banks and rewrites its own supervision, while the CFPB positions itself to catch whatever the OCC's review did not cover. That is the agencies' framing, and it is worth keeping distinct from what has actually happened: the OCC's findings are documented, but which institutions the CFPB will pursue, what remedies it will seek, and on what timeline, are all still open questions. m:…2005 m:…9092