A report compiled by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reveals that, between 2020 and 2025, the nine largest U.S. banks deprived certain customers of banking access due to their politics or their religion.  

Debanking results in the often-sudden closing of client accounts, denial of credit, or refusal to provide payment-processing services. Banks offer “reputational risk” as a rationale for debanking certain clients. 

OCC examiners sifted through nearly 100,000 complaints to produce the 47-page review, concluding that bank “policies disadvantaged holding certain political, religious, and social views.”

The report cited J.P. Morgan’s payment operation, WePay, for closing the accounts of several conservative groups, as well as that of a business “that sold merchandise promoting President Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) brand.”

 It revealed that Wells Fargo induced a vendor to close a non-profit’s account after “highlighting the non-profit’s views on same sex marriage.” 

According to The Washington Stand, “conservative and pro-marriage organizations lost banking access due to the recommendations of the Southern Poverty Law Center.” Banks used the SPLC’s hate-group designations to debank clients. 

In an article for The Daily Signal, Heritage Foundation economist, Allen Mendenhall reports that businesses that engaged in “lawful but unfashionable lines of work” were among the entities denied banking services. He lists “oil and gas, coal, firearms, tobacco, private detention facilities, digital assets.” 

Supposedly, banks are cleaning up their act, with some saying they have reformed how they assess reputational risk. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine points out that , “Although all nine banks told the OCC they had revised their practices, the regulator said the reforms have not gone far enough and that no bank had ‘fully and publicly acknowledged’ its weaponization of finance against hardworking Americans.”

As Heritage’s Allen Mendenhall points out, “banking is not a luxury…Modern life runs through the financial system. 

He says only Congress can provide a durable remedy for the discrimination that results from debanking.