- Sen. Elizabeth Warren and President Donald Trump are unlikely allies on the issue of debanking. However, they may be at odds on how to solve the problem.
- Debanking is the closure of a customer or organization’s accounts by a financial institution.
- Warren said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the one agency working to stop debanking, but conservatives have worked to close CFPB for years.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and President Donald Trump are in agreement over an issue affecting banking customers. But the progressive senator’s solution to debanking doesn’t line up with some of the president’s recent policy actions.
What is debanking?
Debanking is the closure of a customer or organization’s accounts by a financial institution. Generally, the practice is done due to a perceived financial, legal, regulatory or reputational risk to the bank.
Trump brought up the topic in January 2025 in response to a question from Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan during a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America,” Trump said. “I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong.”
Republicans have accused big banks of debanking gun makers and fossil fuel companies. That has led to legislative responses.
Several Republican-led states, like Florida, Arizona and Georgia, have passed laws that, in some capacity, stop banks from denying services over risks related to ESG, which stands for environmental, social and governance.
“Donald Trump was onto a real problem when he criticized Bank of America for its debanking practices,” Warren said during a committee hearing on the impact of debanking Wednesday, Feb. 5.
What are banks saying?
Banks are adamant that derisking policies are not arbitrary or related to political ideology.
“We never close accounts for political reasons and don’t have a political litmus test,” Bank of America told Straight Arrow News in an email.
“Now, when we de-bank someone, they often blame that reason, but that’s not a reason,” JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said on Chase’s “The Unshakeables” podcast in January 2025. “We don’t bank marijuana companies because there’s no federal law around it. We simply can’t follow the law. If there’s a federal law, we probably would, and we do bank some crypto companies, and very carefully. We are responsible in the law to fight sex trafficking, money laundering, tax avoidance. It’s the Bank Secrecy Act, and we have to follow that.”
Warren says the biggest banks are the biggest offenders
Ahead of the hearing, Warren released an analysis of how many Americans complained about debanking to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“In the last three years, 8,056 consumers filed complaints with the CFPB against a financial institution for improperly closing checking, savings, or other deposit accounts,” the analysis read. “In the same period, 3,899 consumers filed complaints related to being ‘unable to open’ a deposit account.”
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Warren said Wednesday. “So we need to figure out why, and who is responsible. My staff did some more work here as well. They found that just four big banks—Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Citibank—accounted for half of all the complaints filed at the CFPB.”
During the hearing, Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley said his company was informed in 2023 it would lose its accounts at an unnamed financial institution because the bank was uncomfortable with its crypto clients.
“They refused to provide any further explanation or allow us to speak with the risk management team. Needless to say, I was shocked,” McCauley said. “We had extreme difficulty finding new banking partners. We spoke to about 40 banks across the country and were rejected by all of them, many telling us they had a blanket policy against serving crypto clients.”
Trump and Warren split on solving the problem
Where Warren and Trump diverge on the issue is how to correctly address the problem.
“The CFPB is the one agency that is actively working to stop unfair debanking,” Warren said. “Right now, the agency has five different rules either in place or in progress that would help prevent debanking by addressing some of the root causes, from overdraft fee practices to religious discrimination. And the CFPB is working to hold banks accountable when they close law-abiding citizens’ and businesses’ accounts for no good reason.”
Over the weekend of Feb. 1, the president fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden. Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent took over as acting director.
On Monday, Feb. 3, Bessent sent an email to staffers leaked to multiple media outlets. The email told CFPB employees to stop all work related to regulations, rulemaking and corporate investigations unless required by law.
“The freeze Secretary Bessent has put on the CFPB means more Americans across the country will be unfairly debanked, and they will lose the one agency that is working to help them,” Warren said.
Warren was instrumental in the creation of the CFPB before she was elected to the Senate. The agency, born out of the 2008 financial crisis and created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, combined consumer financial protection authority from seven different agencies.
Conservatives have tried toppling CFPB in the courts by challenging the constitutionality of its funding. The agency gets its funding from the Federal Reserve Board, outside of congressional appropriations. But when the issue reached the Supreme Court, the majority sided with CFPB.
In November 2024, after Trump announced Elon Musk would lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, Musk tweeted, “Delete CFPB. There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.”