- Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are denying that political affiliation has any bearing on the customers who do business at the banks after President Trump alleged at Davos that BofA had refused to do business with some conservatives.
President Trump threw a curveball to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan after his Thursday address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The president alleged that BofA has refused business from conservative customers.
“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 told Moynihan. “They don’t take conservative business and I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what but you and Jamie [Dimon] and everybody… I hope you open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong.”
In a statement to Fortune, a spokesperson for Bank of America said: “We serve more than 70 million clients, we welcome conservatives and have no political litmus test.”
A spokesperson at JPMorgan Chase, where Dimon serves as CEO and chairman, told Fortune the bank has “never and would never close an account for political reasons, full stop.”
“We follow the law and guidance from our regulators and have long said there are problems with the current framework Washington must address. We welcome the opportunity to work with the new Administration and Congress on ways to remove regulatory ambiguity while maintaining our country’s ability to address financial crime.”
In JPM’s The Unshakeables podcast this week, Dimon addressed the topic of “debanking” with podcast host and CEO of Chase’s business banking unit Ben Walter. Dimon was asked to respond to venture capitalist and Department of Government Efficiency unpaid intern Marc Andreessen’s comments on the matter last year. Andreessen previously alleged that at least 30 high-profile crypto founders and executives had seen their bank accounts summarily terminated in the past four years—with zero explanation.
Dimon said he called Andreessen after he heard the remarks, noting the two are friends. Dimon said he told the investor JPM hadn’t debanked anyone because of political or religious affiliations.
“Now, when we debank someone, they often blame that reason, but that’s not a reason,” said Dimon on the podcast. He noted that JPM does not bank marijuana companies because there’s no federal law on the matter: “If there's a federal law, we probably would. And we do bank some crypto companies, and very carefully.”
Walter noted that the Bank Secrecy Act requires banks to develop risk-based anti-money-laundering compliance and other risk-analysis systems that flag customers and entities that could potentially have ties to suspicious activities or organized crime.
“But where Marc is right is all these examples where they put a lot of pressure on us and they tell us what is high-risk, and if we don't debank someone and something goes wrong, we can pay hundreds of millions dollars of fines,” said Dimon. “So, a lot of banks are guessing, like, ‘We should get rid of these people because if we don't get rid of them, we'll be fined.’ And you’ve seen that over and over and over.”
Dimon added that banks aren’t allowed to explain to a customer why they’ve been sent packing, but he thinks banks shouldn’t be restricted from doing so. Dimon added that JPM has been “complaining about this for years.”
“We have to comply with the law, but it's ambiguous and we're punished if we make a mistake in our judgment.”
Politico reported this week that Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is prepping for a hearing on debanking in the coming months.
