WASHINGTON—At the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing on debanking this week, Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made the case for lifting the freeze on the CFPB to finalize rules that would help prevent debanking by addressing some of the root causes—from overdraft fee practices to discrimination because of someone’s religious or political beliefs, the Senate Banking Committee stated in a release.
During the hearing, Warren called out Treasury Secretary and Acting CFPB Director Scott Bessent for halting all CFPB rulemaking, enforcement investigations, and litigation against financial institutions that are breaking the law—including banks that are wrongfully debanking their customers, the release said.
“The freeze Secretary Bessent has put on the CFPB means more Americans across the country will be unfairly de-banked, and they will lose the one agency working to help them,” said Warren.
Nathan McCauley, CEO and Co-Founder of Anchorage Digital, claimed in his testimony that his company lost its bank account, and dozens of banks—including some of the biggest in the country—turned him down. During Warren’s questioning, McCauley agreed with her that it would be useful to have more transparency into the problem like the CFPB’s consumer complaints database provides and agreed with her that people who are illegitimately debanked deserve some rules to protect them and an appeals process if they lose access to their accounts.
Prior to the hearing, Warren released new analysis identifying thousands of debanking complaints with more than half against four big banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup. And in a letter to President Trump, Warren urged him to lift his freeze on CFPB’s work.