For years, conservatives and religious Americans who said their bank accounts were being closed for political reasons were told they were imagining things. A new federal report says otherwise.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released its debanking review on Wednesday, October 14, 2026. It found that the nation’s nine largest federally regulated banks maintained policies that restricted access to financial services based on political, religious or social views, or lawful business activities.
The review covered the period from 2020 to September 2025. The banks named are JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD Bank and BMO.
The OCC says it examined 100,000 complaints and 50,000 internal bank records. That is not a handful of anecdotes. It is a deep look at how these institutions actually made decisions.
The review followed an executive order President Trump signed in August 2025 directing regulators to address politicized or unlawful debanking. Comptroller Jonathan Gould called the findings irrefutable evidence that the largest banks had denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses.
The examples in the report are specific. In February 2021, a payment processor owned by a major bank closed the account of a merchant selling merchandise that promoted President Trump and the MAGA brand.
That processor was WePay, a JPMorgan subsidiary, which the report says canceled many accounts belonging to political or religious merchants. In June 2021, WePay closed the account of a religious organization that its own employees described internally as a conservative, right-wing religious nonprofit.
Over and over, the report found, banks leaned on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate group designations to justify turning customers away. That should concern anyone who believes a private advocacy group’s labels should not decide who gets access to the financial system.
PNC refused a line of credit to a media company after its internal environmental, social and governance group noted that one owner’s foundation had funded Christian conservative groups the SPLC called hate groups. Another owner was a conservative commentator, according to the report.
The review also found banks reluctant to serve the firearms industry. In one case, a reputation-risk review of a prospective firearms client noted that under the Biden administration, banks could face more supervisory pressure to move away from lending to that industry.
Internal records showed employees worried about retaliation from the Biden administration, as well as criticism from anti-gun activists and members of Congress. In other words, the report says fear of government displeasure shaped private financial decisions.
The restrictions reached beyond politics and religion. Banks limited services to businesses involved in oil and gas, coal, firearms, tobacco, e-cigarettes and digital assets, and Bank of America restricted relationships with private prison companies.
The common thread was something banks call reputation risk. It is a vague standard, and that vagueness is the problem. A bank can use it to decide that a customer is too controversial without ever having to prove wrongdoing.
