The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) released a comprehensive report on October 14, 2026 that details a pattern of “debaking” across the nine largest nationally chartered banks. The review was launched under the President’s Executive Order titled “Guaranteeing Fair Access to Banking for All Americans,” which instructed regulators to determine whether financial institutions were denying services based on political, religious or lawful business considerations.
Targeted institutions included JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank and BMO. The OCC’s analysis covered the period from 2020 through September 2025 and examined nearly 100,000 consumer complaints, along with roughly 420,000 pages of internal documents supplied by the banks.
How the OCC conducted its supervisory review
Investigators collected about 50,000 files that outlined each bank’s policies, procedures and specific case decisions. The agency applied a risk-based framework, focusing on whether banks employed reputation-risk criteria that were vague, lacked measurable standards, and allowed external pressures—such as media narratives or advocacy-group opinions—to influence lending and account-opening decisions. The review also considered the impact of state “fair-access” statutes, which appeared to prompt some banks to tighten their policies ahead of the OCC’s inquiry.
By cross-referencing complaints with internal logs, the OCC identified systematic patterns rather than isolated incidents. The methodology emphasized objective, data-driven evaluation, contrasting sharply with the banks’ own reliance on subjective risk assessments.
Key findings on debanking practices
All nine banks were found to have adopted broad “reputation-risk” policies that effectively barred certain customers and lawful enterprises. Political affiliation, religious doctrine, and industry sector emerged as primary factors. The report lists specific sectors that faced heightened scrutiny: oil and gas exploration, coal mining and coal-powered plants, firearms manufacturing and distribution, detention-facility construction, tobacco and e-cigarette sales, and digital-asset activities.
Examples cited include a bank that refused a loan to a coal-mining operation because of anticipated public protests, and another that blocked an initial public offering for a firearms manufacturer whose internal policies did not align with the bank’s own standards. Internal memos revealed that some decisions were driven by negative news searches or the classification of certain organizations by advocacy groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had labeled some Christian-conservative entities as “hate groups.”
Comptroller Jonathan V. Gould stated, “Today’s report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses.” He added that fair access to banking is a “mandate, not a mantra,” underscoring the administration’s commitment to ending the “weaponization of finance.”
In parallel with the October 14 release, the OCC held a press conference in Lexington, Kentucky, alongside Congressman Andy Barr and representatives from the state’s coal and firearms industries. Industry participants described how the banks’ policies disrupted financing for expansions, hampered payroll processing, and increased borrowing costs.
Since announcing the review in September 2025, the OCC has already taken several actions: removing reputation-risk considerations from bank examinations, clarifying how improper debanking factors into licensing reviews, and streamlining complaint intake procedures. Gould indicated that further adjustments to the supervisory framework are under consideration to prevent recurrence of “harmful practices.”
The OCC’s ongoing agenda includes drafting rules that would prohibit banks from discriminating based on political or religious beliefs and tightening oversight of how banks evaluate reputational concerns. As Gould warned, “Notwithstanding certain efforts by the largest banks to rein in these practices, I am not confident that they will be enough” signaling a likely escalation in regulatory scrutiny.
