The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency recently released a report related to the Donald Trump’s administration’s efforts to prevent banks from discriminating against persons and organizations for their political and religious beliefs, and conservative activists have been citing the report as evidence that banks have been discriminating against Christians.
A few examples from news articles, some directed at conservative Christians:
🟪 Daily Citizen headline: Big Banks Discriminate Against Christians and Conservatives, New Report Finds
🟪 Breaking Christian News headline: These Major Banks Targeted Christians, Trump Supporters
🟪 Unmuzzled News headline: Treasury Report Exposed the Scheme to Shut Down Christian Groups Bank Accounts
🟪 Religion Unplugged headline: Christian Groups Among Those Cited As ‘Reputational Risks’ By Banks
Are such claims supported by the facts? Let’s see:
Truth verdict: ❓
The report, released earlier this month, sharply criticizes banks for using “reputational risk” as a factor in deciding whether to provide loans and providing other banking services, and it found that the use of that factor “disadvantaged certain Americans based on their political, religious or social views or based on their lawful business activities.” However, the report offers scant evidence, at the most, that banking decisions were made based on Christian beliefs of customers, and the report cites no examples where such decisions were allegedly made solely because of Christian beliefs of connections.
Of course, just because the report doesn’t offer firm evidence of anti-Christian discrimination doesn’t mean that it hasn’t happened; the best that can be said is that the report is inconclusive.
The report was based on an analysis of the practices of the nine largest U.S. banks from the beginning of 2020 to September 2025. The OCC said it reviewed reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints, hundreds of individual bank decisions and about 420,000 pages of bank documents.
What the report does show, at the least, is that banks are skittish about providing banking services to businesses, nonprofits or other organizations that are controversial. And while the emphasis in the report is on anti-conservative bias, it does acknowledge that that the anti-controversy stance can cut both ways as banks sometimes deny services to both liberal and conservative groups.
These are among the examples of discrimination the report cited:
🟪 A payment processor closed the account of merchant selling pro-Trump merchandise such as MAGA hats.
🟪 A bank declined to provide financial services to a public education organization because its political arm endorsed only Democrats.
🟪 The policies of one bank prevented it from providing services to those whose policies on firearms differed from the bank’s stance.
🟪 A bank subsidiary denied services to a legal advocacy organization because it had been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.1
🟪 A bank had a policy of not providing services to partisan organizations. While the policy “appears to have been applied consistently to organizations on both sides of the political spectrum, [the bank] ultimately declined to provide financial services to organizations merely for the constitutionally protected views the organizations espouse.” It did provide services to bipartisan groups, however.
Overall, the report makes a strong argument that banks having policies against doing business with groups that might harm the bank’s reputation can lead to banks making arbitrary decisions because of the customers’ political, social and religious beliefs. The OCC also suggested that it has pressured banks to tighten their policies to make them less arbitrary, and it has adopted rules designed to make discrimination less likely.
The OCC is continuing to investigate alleged discrimination, and it is asking that those who believe they were discriminated against for religious or other reasons to report such incidents to http://www.helpwithmybank.gov.
The SPLC’s list of hate groups includes several well-known law firms that have been involved with litigation in religious-freedom cases as well as some Christian lobbying organizations. Among those that have been on the SPLC hate list (although not necessarily every year) are the Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel. Although the list includes many churches, such as those in the Christian Identity movement, it does not include any mainstream Christian denominations, evangelical or otherwise.