Target 8.10: Access to banking, insurance, and financial services
Strengthen the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and expand access to banking, insurance and financial services for all
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
The World Bank's 2025 Global Findex reports that 79 percent of adults worldwide now hold an account, while 1.3 billion adults remain outside the formal financial system and 55 percent of those are women. It credits mobile money and digitally enabled accounts as the main driver. The providers are largely listed telecoms and financial institutions whose product, fee and agent-network decisions determine access. Corporate political influence is a direct obstacle to inclusive practice. JPMorgan, which earned USD 1.1 billion in overdraft revenue in 2023, threatened new checking fees on more than 80 million customers in response to a CFPB overdraft rule. Bank shareholders already vote on conduct and lobbying. In 2024, lobbying-disclosure proposals drew 41 percent at Truist, 39 percent at BNY Mellon and Goldman Sachs, 36 percent at Wells Fargo and 31 percent at Morgan Stanley. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility's members spent years pressing Wells Fargo over its payday-style Direct Deposit Advance product, filing resolutions for three straight years until the bank dropped it in 2014. Provider conduct is decisive and industry lobbying is the obstacle, so owners can deliver most of this outcome.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Financial inclusion at record high, but 1.3 billion still unbanked: World Bank Global Findex 2025 report, BIIA.com, 2025-07-29
- The Global Findex Database 2025, World Bank, 2025
- Warren, Van Hollen Slam JPMorgan Chase for Threatening Customers with "Outrageous" New Checking Fees, Office of U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, 2024-08-09
- Investors drive banks toward greater transparency on climate in 2024 proxy season, Ceres, 2024-05-24
- Investors Commend Wells Fargo for Dropping Direct Deposit Advance Product, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2014-01-17
6 campaigns on record
Asked the bank's board to publish a report on how it oversees the risk that it discriminates against people on the basis of race, colour, religion including religious views, sex, national origin, or political views, and on whether such discrimination affects people's exercise of constitutionally protected civil rights.
Result: Voted on at the annual meeting of 1 May 2024 as Proposal 4, titled by the company 'Stockholder proposal requesting a report on the risks of politicized de-banking'. About 2.4% of the shares voted for and against were in favour (552,843 for, 22,687,494 against). Counting the 118,146 abstentions in the base also gives about 2.4% (3,844,720 broker non-votes). The proposal was not approved. Inspire also filed a notice of exempt solicitation urging a yes vote.
We found no documented change by First Citizens BancShares that any source attributes to this vote.
Asked the bank's board to publish a report on how it oversees the risk that it discriminates against people on the basis of race, colour, religion including religious views, sex, national origin, or political views, and on whether such discrimination affects people's exercise of constitutional civil rights.
Result: Voted on at the annual meeting of 26 April 2024 as Item 5, a request for a report on risks of politicised de-banking. About 1.3% of the shares voted for and against were in favour (1,322,381 for, 101,929,606 against). Counting the 1,129,492 abstentions in the base also gives about 1.3%. The 8-K as retrieved did not disclose broker non-votes for this item. The proposal was not approved. Inspire also filed a notice of exempt solicitation urging a yes vote, signed by more than 100 investors and financial professionals.
We found no documented change by Zions Bancorporation that any source attributes to this vote.
Form 8-K, results of the 2024 annual meeting of shareholders, Zions Bancorporation via SEC EDGAR
Asked the bank's board to publish a report on how it oversees the risk that it discriminates against people on the basis of race, colour, religion including religious views, sex, national origin, or political views, and on whether such discrimination affects people's exercise of constitutionally protected civil rights. Inspire described the practice it was targeting as politicised de-banking.
Result: Voted on at the annual meeting of 17 April 2024 as Proposal 5, titled by the company 'Shareholder Proposal Relating to a Report on Risks of Politicized De-Banking'. About 1.6% of the shares voted for and against were in favour (10,634,204 for, 673,164,762 against). Counting abstentions in the base gives about 1.5% (19,189,364 abstentions, 110,818,886 broker non-votes). The proposal was not approved. Inspire also filed a notice of exempt solicitation urging a yes vote, signed by more than 100 investors and financial professionals.
We found no documented change by Regions Financial that any source attributes to this vote.
Asked BNY Mellon to publish a report on the risks the bank faces from what the proposal called politicized de-banking, including the risk of discriminating against potential clients on the basis of their religious or political views.
Result: Precatory proposal filed under Rule 14a-8 and voted on as Proposal 5 at the annual meeting of 9 April 2024. Votes for 19,467,731; votes against 588,664,175; abstentions 11,780,709; broker non-votes 50,755,114. That is 3.20% of the votes cast for and against, or 3.14% if abstentions are counted in the base. The proposal was not approved. The company's Form 8-K records that the corporate secretary presented the proposal at the meeting because neither the proponent nor the proponent's representative was there to present it. No representative of the proponent attended the meeting; the corporate secretary read the resolution so that it could be voted on.
We found no documented change to BNY Mellon's client-selection or account-closure policies that any source we retrieved attributes to this proposal.
Asked the bank to publish a report, updated twice a year, on any requests it receives from government officials to close customer accounts, covering who made each request, what it involved, when it was made, what the bank decided and why.
Result: Filed under Rule 14a-8 and never put to a vote. On March 21, 2023 the staff of the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance told the bank it would not recommend enforcement action if the proposal was left out of the proxy statement, on the ground that it could be excluded under Rule 14a-8(i)(7) as relating to ordinary business operations. The staff wrote that the proposal relates to, and does not transcend, ordinary business matters.
we found no documented change
Urged Wells Fargo to discontinue its Direct Deposit Advance product, a payday-style advance repaid automatically from the customer's next deposit, which the filers argued trapped customers in a cycle of debt through automatic repayment and high fees. Resolutions were filed for three consecutive years and the investors had engaged the bank since 2009.
With Christian Brothers Investment Services, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility members
Result: Withdrawn or overtaken by the company's own decision: Wells Fargo announced on January 17, 2014 that it would discontinue the product
Wells Fargo discontinued the Direct Deposit Advance program effective February 1, 2014
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.