Banks that are “too big to fail” are too big for bias.
Yet Bank of America, the second largest bank in the world, violated public trust when it canceled the accounts of nonprofits for reasons that appear to be based on viewpoint.
Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement Jeremy Tedesco writes in a recent RealClear Markets piece about Bank of America’s troubling track record.
Tedesco highlights how Bank of America followed a pattern typical for de-banking when it abruptly canceled the accounts of Indigenous Advance Ministries, a nonprofit that serves widows and orphans in Uganda. Asked for an explanation, Bank of America stonewalled the ministry before concocting a flimsy excuse to save face in the public square months later.
As Tedesco recounts, when shareholders recently sought a report assessing whether Bank of America’s policies and practices pose a risk of politicized de-banking, the bank dodged this opportunity for transparency and instead doubled down on its false excuse:
I was still surprised and disappointed when Bank of America officials repeated the “debt collection” canard as the reason it closed Indigenous Advance’s account at the annual meeting. The bank knows this rationale does not apply to the ministry or the church. In fact, they know it is factually untrue. Yet bank officials said it anyway, misleading all its shareholders and sullying Indigenous Advance’s good name in a sad attempt to save face and avoid accountability.
Tedesco observes that the bank’s refusal to come clean about its practices at a recent shareholder meeting is “a case study in how to build distrust.”
As the saying goes, if you have nothing to fear you have nothing to hide. Unfortunately, Bank of America’s actions suggest it has a lot to fear and a lot to hide. Hopefully, its shareholders will keep the pressure on until it comes clean about its de-banking practices and makes policy changes that decrease de-banking risks and build back public trust.
Read the full article here.