The country’s biggest banks are about to find out whether they’re in trouble. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is preparing to release findings from a sweeping review into whether major lenders improperly closed customer accounts based on political, religious, or reputational grounds.

The probe covers nine major national banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. Both could face formal sanctions if the OCC determines their account closure practices crossed the line from legitimate risk management into something more targeted.

What the OCC is actually investigating

The investigation was triggered by an executive order President Trump issued on August 7, 2025, which directed regulators to probe whether banks denied services to Americans based on their political or religious views. The order specifically targeted what critics have labeled “debanking,” the practice of cutting off financial access to individuals or businesses in disfavored sectors.

Conservative-aligned industries have been at the center of the controversy. Fossil fuel companies, firearms dealers, and cryptocurrency firms have all reported being shut out of the banking system, sometimes with little or no explanation. Crypto firms in particular have long complained about an inability to secure or maintain basic banking relationships, a problem the industry has attributed to regulatory pressure under the previous administration.

Preliminary OCC findings published in December 2025 paint a picture of the scale involved. The agency identified policies connected to more than 100,000 complaints filed between 2020 and 2023 regarding account closures. A significant portion of those complaints came from crypto businesses and individuals associated with politically conservative causes.

The regulatory machinery in motion

The OCC hasn’t been waiting around for the final report to start changing things. In September 2025, the agency issued new bulletins aimed at eliminating what it called unlawful debanking practices. Those bulletins put banks on notice that closing accounts based on a customer’s industry, political activity, or public reputation, rather than concrete financial risk factors, would no longer be tolerated.

A joint FDIC-OCC rule set for April 2026 will formally prohibit regulators from relying on “reputational risk” as a basis for influencing how banks manage their customer relationships. Reputational risk has been a catch-all category that gave banks enormous discretion to drop clients they found politically inconvenient, and it gave regulators cover to pressure banks into doing so.

The forthcoming report is expected to include detailed findings and could name specific institutions. For banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, being singled out in a federal regulator’s investigation carries both legal and reputational consequences.

What this means for crypto and investors

For the crypto industry, this probe represents something it has wanted for years: official validation that debanking was real, systemic, and unjustified. Crypto firms have spent the better part of half a decade arguing that they were being denied banking access not because of genuine compliance failures but because regulators were quietly discouraging banks from serving the sector.

The OCC has the authority to impose penalties, require changes to bank policies, and issue consent orders. Investors watching this space should pay close attention to whether the April 2026 joint rule gets finalized, because that’s the piece that would embed these changes into the regulatory framework rather than leaving them dependent on who’s sitting in the Oval Office.