The Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found some of the largest banks serving the U.S. allowed political considerations, public pressure and social concerns to influence decisions about who received banking services, according to a sweeping report released Wednesday.
The OCC said it reviewed the nine largest national banks under its supervision, examining nearly 100,000 complaints and about 420,000 pages of documents. It found that all nine had used "reputation risk" policies that lacked "clear," "objective" standards and could disadvantage customers because of their political or religious views or lawful business activities.
"Banks should make decisions based on financial risk, not the political or social preferences of their employees or executives," Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said, according to a transcript of his in remarks Wednesday in Lexington, Kentucky.
The findings may lend new regulatory weight to a grievance President Donald Trump has pressed since returning to office. Trump has repeatedly accused and sued major banks for discriminating against conservatives and has said he was personally "debanked" after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, claims banks have denied.
The report lands a day after the OCC and other Treasury regulators imposed more than $1.2 billion in penalties on Bank of America over separate anti-money-laundering failures. At the same time, the OCC said it is examining whether banks' efforts to comply with anti-money-laundering rules have themselves contributed to debanking.