Breakingviews - Crackdown on US banks encourages riskier behavior

Reuters

08-08-2025

NEW YORK, Aug 8 (Reuters Breakingviews) - A White House offensive against U.S. banks will just tick another box off their deregulation wish list. To stop perceived, albeit unsubstantiated, discrimination against his supporters, President Donald Trump is instructing agencies to scrap, opens new tab 'reputation risk or equivalent concepts' from the customer assessment equation. The baseless crusade will lead to less paperwork, which lenders will welcome, but make it harder to spot fraud.
Trump has accused JPMorgan and Bank of America of rejecting his business after he left office in , and claims that other conservatives have suffered a similar fate. His executive order issued on Thursday says transactions with companies such as Cabela's and payments using terms like MAGA have been flagged despite lacking evidence of criminal conduct. It also directs Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to explore legislative or regulatory responses. Banks deny any systemic bias.
Although there is no clear pattern of discrimination, crimes involving money in the age of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence are on the rise. Americans lost nearly $13 billion to financial fraud last year, up 25% from the previous year, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission reported.
Efforts to spot money laundering and other wrongdoing also have been growing, creating extra burdens for banks. The number of suspicious transaction reports sent to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network from deposit-taking institutions has more than doubled to 2 million since 2017. Lenders worldwide are also on track to spend more than $50 billion in 2026 to prevent fraud, up from $28 billion in 2024, according to a Juniper Research study last year, opens new tab.
Despite disliking the president amplifying allegations of discrimination, BofA boss Brian Moynihan and his counterparts will embrace any policy that pares their hulking rulebook. There are good reasons to rethink ways of assessing credit risks, but it also would help if lenders were required to explain and document decisions to close accounts or turn away borrowers. Trump already has rolled back enforcement, opens new tab of all sorts of financial misdeeds. Further clearing the way for more of them is a far bigger threat than the fanciful idea that profit-seeking banks turn away good business on purely ideological grounds.
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