As Winston & Strawn has detailed in earlier articles and alerts, the Trump administration has prioritized addressing “politicized or unlawful debanking” (i.e., when financial institutions close or refuse to open customer accounts based on a customer’s political affiliation, religion, or involvement in legal but politically disfavored industries), using executive orders, agency bulletins, and internal investigative probes to tackle the subject. The administration’s actions are starting to produce measurable results.

On December 5, 2025, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a joint statement (the Statement) rescinding the Interagency Guidance on Leveraged Lending, issued March 2013 (the 2013 Guidance), as well as the Frequently Asked Questions for Implementing March 2013 Interagency Guidance on Leveraged Lending, issued February 2014 (the 2014 FAQs). The Federal Reserve, which co-signed both documents, has not yet indicated whether it will follow suit, but one would expect larger state-chartered banks that are members of the Federal Reserve System (and thus supervised by the Federal Reserve) to lobby the Federal Reserve for equal treatment on this important issue to maintain a level playing field with their national bank and state-chartered, FDIC-supervised bank competitors.

Winston’s Financial Services Industry Group is closely monitoring debanking regulations and advising global financial institutions on customer onboarding and due diligence.

In this alert, Jack Knight, Carl Fornaris, Patrick Doerr, and Arman Aboutorabi examine Senator Thom Tillis’s (R-NC) proposed Ensuring Fair Access to Banking Act. Although the bill is nominally designed to “limit the circumstances under which a Federal financial regulator may require a financial institution to terminate a specific account,” it in fact proposes much more.

Senator Thom Tillis’s discussion draft of the Ensuring Fair Access to Banking Act would create a single federal “fair access” standard prohibiting “debanking” except in defined circumstances, grant enforcement authority to federal and state regulators, and preempt state fair-access laws. These changes could impact account-opening, maintenance, and exit decisions and increase litigation exposure. Read the full alert for key implications, open questions, and practical steps institutions can take now.