New Fair Banking Executive Order: Key Directives, Implications, Compliance Considerations, Risk Management

On Aug. 7, 2025, President Trump issued an EO titled "Guaranteeing Fair Banking for All Americans." The new EO defines the Trump administration's initiatives relating to banking and financial services and expands on numerous recent federal and state initiatives targeting debanking. 

The fair banking EO is designed to ensure that federal regulators do not promote policies and practices that allow financial institutions to deny or restrict financial services based on political affiliation, religious beliefs, or engagement in lawful business activities. 

The EO generally targets debanking by directing federal regulators to remove "reputation risk" or equivalent concepts as a supervisory consideration. Also, federal regulators are directed to consider rescinding or amending existing regulations to eliminate the risk of politicized or unlawful debanking and to ensure that an institution's or customer's reputation is "considered for regulatory, supervisory, banking, or enforcement purposes solely to the extent necessary to reach a reasonable and apolitical risk-based assessment."

While the EO contains broad mandates to banking agencies, many questions remain as to how these directives will be accomplished within the short timelines set forth in the EO, creating compliance challenges for those in the financial services industry. Counsel should understand the EO's objectives, agency impact, and action taken to date to fulfill these objectives, and how financial services clients may be impacted to help them navigate this rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.

Listen as our expert panel reviews the key directives of the new EO and their implications and provides guidance for advising clients on compliance and risk management strategies going forward.

I. Introduction

II. Understanding the EO: increased federal scrutiny of past and present debanking policies and actions

III. Agency objectives

IV. Agency action to date

V. Impact on financial services industry

VI. Remaining questions and compliance challenges

VII. Other recent federal and state initiatives targeting debanking

VIII. Best practices for compliance and risk mitigation

The panel will address these and other key issues:

• How are the administration's policies relating to financial services reflected in the EO?
• What agencies are impacted by the EO? What agency action will be required? What agency action has been taken to date?
• Who in the financial services industry may be most impacted by the EO's directives and in what ways?
• What questions are left unanswered by the EO, and what are the resulting compliance challenges?