The bank updated a 7-year-old policy, enacted after the Parkland school shooting, over concerns about “fair access” months after Republicans accused some institutions of political de-banking ,Citi has abandoned a 7-year-old policy restricting firearms sales by its retail clients, the bank said in a statement on its website Tuesday.
The move could be read as a bow to increasing pressure from conservative circles that have accused big U.S. banks of failing to serve clients whose political leanings fall right of center.“Citi has always been fully committed to treating all current and potential clients fairly,” Ed Skyler, the bank’s head of enterprise services and public affairs, said Tuesday. “At the same time, we appreciate the concerns that are being raised regarding ‘fair access’ to banking services, and we are following regulatory developments, recent Executive Orders and federal legislation that impact this area.
Broadly, the bank said it would update its employee code of conduct and customer-facing financial access policy “to clearly state that we do not discriminate on the basis of political affiliation in the same way we are clear that we do not discriminate on the basis of other traits such as race and religion.“This will codify what we’ve long practiced,” Skyler said in Tuesday’s statement.But Citi specifically noted it will “no longer have a specific policy as it relates to firearms.
The bank in 2018 enacted a policy prohibiting the sale of firearms to customers who had not passed a background check or were younger than 21 (unless they had military training). The policy – which also banned the sale of bump stocks and high-capacity magazines to clients who offered credit cards backed by Citi, borrowed money or raised capital through the company – came in response to the Parkland, Florida, school shooting that left 17 people dead.
“As a society, we all know that something needs to change,” Skyler said at that time. “And as a company, we feel we must do our part.”
Citi is not the first big U.S. bank to roll back its firearms restrictions. Bank of America in December 2023 tweaked the language of its environmental and social risk policy. While financing the manufacturing of certain firearms had been listed as a “business restriction” in a 2022 policy, it was downgraded to a “business escalation” the following year. Clients and transactions in that sector “must go through an enhanced due diligence process and be escalated to the senior-most risk review body of the applicable line of business for decisioning,” Bank of America said in its December 2023 update.
But where BofA kept its changes contained to fine print, Citi arguably took a bolder, more transparent stance Tuesday through its public statement.
