In this alert, Winston’s Financial Services Industry Group takes a closer look at the OCC’s new stance on disparate impact liability and its implications for the financial services industry.
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced on July 14, 2025, that it will cease supervising banks for disparate impact liability, instructing its examiners to “no longer examine for disparate impact.”[1] Accordingly, OCC examiners will not request, review, conclude on, or follow up on matters related to a bank’s disparate impact related risk, risk analysis, or assessment processes or procedures.[2] The OCC also removed references to disparate impact liability from its fair lending examination manual. 
This policy shift follows President Trump’s April 2025 executive order mandating the elimination of disparate impact liability across federal agencies and claiming that disparate impact liability forces companies to “engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.”[3] Given the Trump administration’s approach, the OCC’s policy shift is unsurprising. But the change means financial services companies should reconsider how they evaluate and address disparate impact risk, not only from the perspective of this revised federal regulatory lens, but also with the understanding that state attorneys general and private litigants will continue to pursue disparate impact claims as long as such claims remain legally viable. 
What does this mean to you and your clients? 

As we reflect on the past in order to prepare for the future, it becomes increasingly clear that 2021 will bring greater use of one of the government’s most powerful civil enforcement tools—the False Claims Act—to root out fraud and abuse involving government funds in myriad industries and in novel ways.

As we reflect on the past in order to prepare for the future, it becomes increasingly clear that 2021 will bring greater use of one of the government’s most powerful civil enforcement tools—the False Claims Act (“FCA”)—to root out fraud and abuse involving government funds in a myriad of industries and in novel ways.