The largest U.S. national banks used policies that could deny services because of customers’ beliefs or lawful business activities, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said in a report released on October 14.
The supervisory review examined nine banks’ practices from 2020 through September 2025. Its central criticism is that vague assessments of reputational harm allowed judgments about politics, religion and public opinion to influence decisions that the regulator says should have rested on objective financial risks.
The banks reviewed were JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Capital One, PNC, TD and BMO. The OCC examined nearly 100,000 complaints and about 420,000 pages of material supplied by the institutions.
The accompanying report describes inconsistent treatment of customers whose views prompted internal scrutiny. It also identifies restrictions affecting businesses in sectors including firearms, fossil fuels and digital assets. Those are the regulator’s supervisory findings, not criminal convictions or findings by a court.
Several examples concern smaller businesses refused services while larger clients obtained exceptions. The report also describes closures communicated so vaguely that customers could not understand the concern or correct a misunderstanding. In some cases, the OCC concluded, clearer communication might have kept an account open.
The review does not make every refusal to provide banking services improper. Its discussion of financial-crime controls recognizes obligations that can require restrictions, while questioning whether imprecise requirements encourage banks to exclude entire classes of customers instead of assessing individual risks.
No financial penalty was announced with Wednesday’s report. The OCC said it was considering further regulatory and supervisory changes; the publication itself does not impose a new rule.
The agency’s preliminary findings appeared in December 2025. This fuller account follows that earlier review and leaves a practical question for its next steps: how banks can distinguish an identifiable legal or financial risk from discomfort about a customer’s reputation.
