The American Bankers Association (ABA) outlined its top policy priorities in its 2025 Blueprint for Growth.
The 2025 Blueprint for Growth focuses on three overarching policy priorities: Drive a healthy economy for all; pursue rational regulation to preserve Main Street access to credit and capital; and foster a competitive financial services market.
“2025 will be a year of significant change that we hope will offer an opportunity to reset the conversation around banking regulation,” ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols said. “This year’s Blueprint for Growth reflects the input and real-world perspective of bank leaders from across the nation, and it will guide our work to advance policies that help grow our economy and empower America’s banks to best serve their customers, clients and communities.”
The blueprint outlines policy proposals and recommendations in a variety of different areas. Here are a few of the suggestions:
- Pursue pro-growth tax policy that encourages investment and expands opportunity for all Americans by ensuring a competitive corporate tax rate and continuing the Section 199A pass-through deduction.
- Enact the Access to Credit for our Rural Economy Act, which will sustain and grow rural America by lowering the cost of credit for farmers and ranchers financing agricultural real estate as well as the cost of homeownership in 17,000 rural communities.
- Support the work of Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs) and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) – banks that are uniquely focused on serving communities of color and low-to-moderate income communities – by creating a CDFI investment tax credit that would incentivize long-term capital investment in these vital institutions.
- Work to repeal Section 1071 while calling on the CFPB to pause implementation and begin a process to formally withdraw the rule.
- Oppose government mandates on credit card routing and urge the Federal Reserve to put low- and moderate-income consumers before the needs of large retailers by withdrawing its proposal to impose misguided debit card price controls.
- Provide a “quantitative impact study” (QIS) and other data analysis that show the true cost to the economy of proposed higher capital standards, which would allow stakeholders to evaluate potential impact on credit availability for specific sectors, including low- and moderate-income borrowers.
- Pass the SAFER Banking Act to get state-sanctioned cannabis cash off the street and into regulated financial institutions, making our communities safer and the cannabis industry more transparent to regulators, tax authorities and law enforcement.
- Delay implementation and withdraw the CFPB’s rule on credit card late fees to preserve access to credit for low-and moderate-income borrowers as litigation remains active.
- Bring stablecoins inside the banking regulatory perimeter, and require equivalent capital, liquidity and consumer protection standards across all stablecoin providers, ensuring banks are not disincentivized relative to nonbank providers and have the regulatory clarity they need to custody digital assets.
The Blueprint for Growth will be shared with every member of Congress and with officials in the incoming Trump-Vance administration.