Overview

• President Trump’s August 7 executive order, titled “Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans,” prohibits politicized or unlawful debanking and requires decisions to rest on individualized, objective, risk-based analyses.
• Federal banking regulators must by February 3, 2026 remove references to reputational risk from supervisory materials, review institutions’ policies that may encourage politicized debanking, and analyze complaint and supervisory data for religion-based cases.
• The Small Business Administration must notify lenders by October 6, 2025 that, by December 5, 2025, they must identify and notify affected customers and reinstate or offer services to clients previously denied for politicized or unlawful reasons.
• Regulators have begun aligning: the Federal Reserve eliminated reputational risk from its supervisory framework, the OCC announced initial depoliticization steps with planned rule changes, and the FDIC intends to bar exam criticism based on reputational risk and to review institutions’ practices; the Fed says banks may still weigh such risks internally if not tied to politicized factors.
• A new Hill opinion column urges Congress to codify the changes through Sen. Tim Scott’s legislation, establish a national fair access standard, and modernize AML/KYC rules to curb unintended account closures.