Overview
- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the FDIC and the NCUA issued joint guidance on Monday, July 13, 2026, urging banks and credit unions to view borrowers without U.S. work authorization as potentially posing elevated credit risk.
- The guidance is formally nonbinding and framed as a reminder of existing underwriting duties, but the OCC said it will press banks for faster remediation and greater attention to any identified risks.
- Regulators said income tied to unauthorized work can be less reliable because of job loss, expired authorizations or removal from the United States, and they told lenders to monitor concentrations by employer, industry or region that could produce correlated losses.
- Analysts and critics warn the practical effect will likely be reduced credit availability for unauthorized immigrants through higher rates, larger down payments or denials, and that tighter scrutiny could raise banks’ compliance costs and push activity into unregulated channels.
- The move implements President Trump’s May executive order and follows a June FinCEN advisory on payroll fraud, and it reverses earlier Biden-era guidance that had discouraged considering immigration status in some lending decisions.