Nine of the nation’s largest banks relied on subjective decision-making and the opinions of advocacy organizations to terminate customer accounts or deny service to potential customers—often because of Biblical beliefs on key moral issues—between 2020 and September 2025.
The findings, released Wednesday, were part of a report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury that charters, regulates, and supervises banks and federal savings associations.
‘Irrefutable Evidence’
“Today’s report provides irrefutable evidence that the nation’s largest banks have denied, debanked and discriminated against customers and lawful businesses,” said Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan V. Gould. “Americans should have access to financial services regardless of their beliefs, affiliations or political views. Fair access to financial services is not a mantra—it is a mandate.”
The OCC says it reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints, hundreds of bank decisions and about 420,000 pages of bank documents in its Debanking Review.
Franklin Graham’s 2023 Warning
In 2023, during the period reviewed by the OCC, Franklin Graham delivered the keynote address at the National Religious Broadcasters convention. He warned those in attendance, “We are living in a cancel culture that wants to destroy Christian organizations. They want us to shut our mouths. They don’t want to hear from us. Now, if you don’t preach the Gospel, you don’t have anything to worry about. If you’re not going to talk about sin, you don’t have anything to worry about. But if you’re going to try to preach and proclaim the Gospel, they’re going to try to shut you up.”
Key Findings
The report highlights a number of key findings the OCC found in its review. Among them:
- The banks largely lacked clear and measurable standards and objective, risk-based criteria for assessing the reputational risks of customer relationships. The report added: “The banks also relied on various sources to inform these decisions, including the results of negative news searches and non-traditional sources, such as the opinions of advocacy organizations.”
- The way the banks implemented ambiguous “reputation risk” policies disadvantaged Americans holding certain political, religious and social views.
- Mere allegations, negative press or negative reviews contributed to some banks declining to serve average Americans, even in the absence of any validation of the underlying facts or concerns.
- The passage of “fair access” laws in several states seems to have led many banks to revise the policies that had led to their unjustly debanking customers, but the report adds with the change of each administration or Congress, “a return to prioritizing public perception could easily result in backsliding.”
Dubious Sources
Reputational risk appears to have been a core concern in the debanking of certain customers. The review found that bank policies reflected concern for negative news, social media or attention from advocacy groups. The report includes several examples of banks basing decisions, at least in part, on information from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has repeatedly labeled Christian organizations as “hate groups” because of the Biblical views of those organizations.
The report includes several examples of customers whose accounts were closed or were otherwise denied financial services because of perceived reputational risks.
PNC Bank declined to issue a line of credit to a media company. “Bank employees cited a speech made by one owner, ‘a conservative political commentator,’ and noted that another owner’s foundation ‘has funded several Christian conservative groups, including several identified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center.’ One bank employee stated, ‘I think it becomes really difficult to justify aligning ourselves with a company whose owners have built very public personas around opinions very contrary to PNC’s beliefs/values.’”
In June 2021, JPMorgan subsidiary WePay closed the account of a customer that employees characterized in the bank’s internal tracking system as a “[r]ight wing religious conservative nonprofit with strong anti LGBTQ rhetoric.”
Wells Fargo influenced one of its independent sales organization customers to close the merchant account of a religious nonprofit, providing the sales organization with information from a third-party website highlighting the nonprofit’s views on same-sex marriage. The sales organization terminated the nonprofit’s account.
Executive Order
The OCC launched its review in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump in August 2025.
The executive order stated: “Financial institutions have engaged in unacceptable practices to restrict law-abiding individuals’ and businesses’ access to financial services on the basis of political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities.” The order added that as a result, “individuals, their businesses, and their families have been subjected to debanking on the basis of their political affiliations, religious beliefs or lawful business activities, and have suffered frozen payrolls, debt and crushing interest, and other significant harms to their livelihoods, reputations and financial well-being.”
The banks included in the review were JPMorgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo Bank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC Bank, TD Bank, and BMO Bank.
Scripture to consider: John 15:20, 1 Peter 2:23, Romans 12:21
