01/10/2026
When the Banks Decide Who Is Respectable Enough to Have an Account
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Financial discrimination against glamour photographers, adult entertainers and the wider XXX industry deserves a serious public debate
There is a strange contradiction at the heart of modern banking. Banks are private businesses with legitimate responsibilities to prevent fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing and other financial crime. They must know their customers, monitor transactions and comply with increasingly complex regulatory requirements.
But banks are also the gateway through which almost every legitimate business and individual must pass to participate fully in the modern economy.
That creates a difficult question: what happens when a bank decides that a lawful industry is simply too controversial, too risky or too damaging to its reputation to serve?
For people working in glamour photography, adult entertainment, online adult content and other parts of the legal XXX economy, this is not an abstract question. It can affect whether someone can open a business account, accept payments, obtain financial services, secure credit, process card transactions or simply keep their existing bank account.
The problem is particularly significant because the adult economy is much broader than the stereotypical image of pornography. It includes photographers, models, performers, production companies, studios, event organisers, publishers, websites, subscription platforms, marketing agencies, web developers, payment intermediaries and many other legitimate businesses.
The Financial Conduct Authority has itself acknowledged that organisations in the adult entertainment sector have experienced difficulties accessing banking services. In its work on payment-account access, the FCA identified adult entertainment among sectors experiencing account-access problems and said firms should have a clear and properly considered definition of "reputational risk."
That acknowledgement should force a much wider conversation.
The invisible barrier of banking
For most people, opening a bank account is an administrative exercise. You provide identification, proof of address, information about your income and perhaps details about your business. Assuming everything is satisfactory, you receive an account number, sort code and debit card.
For someone working in a controversial but lawful industry, the process can be very different. A bank may ask substantially more questions about the nature of the business. A payment provider may impose additional restrictions. A transaction may be scrutinised because its description or counterparties are associated with adult services. An account may be reviewed because the bank's internal risk systems identify the customer's occupation or business activity as potentially problematic.
Sometimes the customer is told precisely what the problem is. Sometimes they are not.
That lack of transparency is one of the most troubling features of financial exclusion. The FCA has recognised that banks have historically not always been required to explain why an account has been closed, particularly where doing so could interfere with financial-crime investigations. But the regulator has also repeatedly emphasised the importance of fair treatment and appropriate communication.
There is a legitimate reason for secrecy in some circumstances. A bank cannot necessarily tell a customer that it suspects money laundering or another criminal offence. But "we cannot tell you because of regulatory obligations" should not become a convenient explanation for every uncomfortable commercial decision.
There is an enormous difference between "We have identified evidence suggesting this particular account is being used for financial crime" and "We don't want this category of business as a customer." Those are fundamentally different propositions. The first is risk management. The second is sector exclusion. And it is the second that deserves scrutiny.
The FCA's own guidance on de-risking makes this distinction particularly important. It states that banks should adopt a risk-based approach rather than generically treating entire categories of customers as unacceptable. The FCA says that risks can vary significantly between individual relationships within the same broad category.
That principle should apply to adult businesses just as it applies elsewhere. A professional glamour photographer is not automatically a money launderer because some of their clients work in adult entertainment. A legally operating adult-content production company is not automatically fraudulent because its customers purchase sexually explicit material. A model is not automatically a financial-crime risk because of the nature of their work.
A bank should assess the actual customer, the actual business, the actual transactions and the actual risk. That sounds obvious. Yet the existence of "reputational risk" creates an uncomfortable grey area.
When reputation becomes a financial blacklist
Reputation matters enormously to financial institutions. A bank does not want its brand associated with fraud, exploitation, trafficking, money laundering or illegal pornography. Nor should it. The public would rightly expect banks to take those issues extremely seriously.
But reputational risk can become dangerously subjective. What exactly constitutes reputational damage? Is it a genuine risk that customers will leave a bank if they discover it provides an account to a legal adult-content company? Is it a concern about media coverage? Is it a fear that shareholders or commercial partners will object? Or is it simply a moral judgement about the customer's occupation?
That distinction matters. The FCA has specifically said that banks should have a clear and properly considered definition of reputational risk. That is important because reputational risk can become a catch-all phrase. It can potentially allow an institution to say "We don't like this sector" without explicitly saying "We don't like this sector."
This is where financial discrimination can become difficult to prove. Imagine two photographers. Photographer A specialises in weddings, corporate portraits and fashion. Photographer B specialises in glamour, boudoir and adult-themed photography. Both are registered businesses. Both pay tax. Both have professional websites, use contracts, maintain proper accounts, verify their customers, have insurance, generate legitimate invoices, have the same turnover and have no criminal history.
Yet Photographer B may discover that certain banks, insurers, payment processors or financial institutions regard their business as higher risk. The difference is not necessarily financial behaviour. It may be the nature of the work. That is where the debate about financial discrimination begins.
The problem becomes even more serious when individual workers are affected. A person can be perfectly capable of separating their professional and personal finances. They may have a conventional mortgage, pay council tax, purchase groceries, pay utility bills and contribute to the tax system. Yet their occupation can potentially make accessing financial products more difficult.
The FCA's 2024 work explicitly highlighted the adult entertainment sector when discussing problems with access to accounts. And this issue has received wider public attention. Reporting in the UK has documented allegations from people working in adult entertainment who said they experienced account closures, difficulties opening business accounts and restrictions on other financial services.
This is not evidence that every bank is discriminating against every adult-industry customer. It is evidence that the problem is serious enough to deserve investigation.
The cost of being financially excluded
Banking discrimination is not merely inconvenient. For a modern business, losing access to banking can be devastating. A business account is not a luxury. It is infrastructure. Without it, a business may struggle to receive customer payments, pay employees and contractors, pay suppliers, process subscriptions, manage taxes, pay rent, purchase advertising, obtain finance, establish creditworthiness, maintain accounting records and operate professionally.
For an individual, the consequences can also be severe. A bank account is needed to receive wages or business income, pay bills, manage direct debits, receive benefits or other legitimate income, and participate in the ordinary financial system.
Financial exclusion can therefore create a vicious circle. The person loses banking access. They turn to alternative payment arrangements. Those alternatives may be more expensive or less convenient. The unusual payment patterns may then appear more suspicious to another financial institution. The individual becomes even harder to bank.
The FCA has recognised the wider social and economic consequences of de-risking. Its research has found that losing banking facilities can create significant stress and inconvenience, particularly where customers receive little meaningful explanation.
There is another danger. Pushing legitimate adult-industry workers away from mainstream financial services can make them less, rather than more, financially secure. If legitimate workers cannot access normal business accounts or payment systems, they may be pushed towards cash, informal payment arrangements or less established financial intermediaries. That can create additional risks. It can make income harder to document, taxation more complicated, businesses harder to audit and increase vulnerability to theft or fraud.
And for individuals in the adult industry, financial vulnerability can have consequences beyond simple inconvenience. This is one reason why the debate should not be framed as "banks supporting pornography". The issue is much broader. It is about whether people who participate in lawful economic activity should have reasonable access to the financial infrastructure required to operate safely.
Banks should absolutely reject criminal businesses, investigate suspicious transactions, comply with anti-money-laundering requirements and prevent trafficking, exploitation and financial crime. But none of those objectives necessarily requires the financial system to treat every lawful adult-industry customer as inherently suspicious.
The FCA has made this point precisely in its broader de-risking guidance: effective anti-money-laundering controls do not require wholesale de-risking, and banks should avoid treating entire categories of customers generically. That is the principle that needs to be defended.
A fairer financial system
The solution is not to demand that banks accept every customer regardless of risk. That would be unreasonable. The solution is proportionate, evidence-based banking. A bank should be able to say no to a business where there is a genuine, demonstrable risk that it cannot manage. But it should also be able to explain, where legally possible, what the problem is and allow legitimate customers to address misunderstandings.
The regulatory environment is already moving in this direction. The UK strengthened protections around bank-account closures in April 2026. According to the Government, banks and other providers must generally give customers at least 90 days' notice and provide sufficiently detailed and specific explanations when terminating services, subject to exceptions. The Financial Ombudsman Service now also states that banks must not close accounts because of bias or discrimination and must treat customers fairly.
These developments are important. But regulation is only part of the answer. Banks should consider establishing clearer policies for controversial but lawful sectors. Instead of an opaque internal blacklist, there should be transparent risk criteria. Instead of assuming that an entire industry is dangerous, banks should assess individual businesses. Instead of relying on vague concepts of "reputation", institutions should distinguish between genuine reputational threats and moral discomfort. And instead of making customers repeatedly prove their legitimacy to different departments, banks should develop consistent procedures for high-risk but lawful industries.
There is also a case for better data. How many adult-industry businesses are refused accounts? How many existing customers have their accounts closed? How many are rejected by payment providers? What reasons are given? How many decisions are based on financial-crime concerns? How many are based on reputational risk? How many are simply commercial decisions?
At present, there is not enough publicly available data to answer these questions with confidence. That is itself a problem. The FCA has acknowledged gaps in the information available about account closures and access. Its work has repeatedly emphasised the need for better understanding of why customers are denied or removed from financial services. Without reliable data, the debate becomes anecdotal. One side says discrimination is widespread. The other says banks are simply protecting themselves from legitimate risks. Both may contain some truth. The only way to establish the scale of the problem is to measure it.
The principle should be simple. The financial system should not be required to endorse a customer's lifestyle, profession or creative output. A bank does not have to approve of glamour photography, adult entertainment or pornography. It does not even have to want these industries as part of its marketing strategy.
But there is a fundamental difference between not approving of something and declaring it financially unbankable. In a liberal economy, legality should mean something. If an activity is lawful, properly registered, properly taxed and conducted with appropriate safeguards, the default should not be that the people involved are financially untouchable.
The answer to criminality should be investigation. The answer to money laundering should be robust compliance. The answer to fraud should be detection and enforcement. The answer to exploitation should be protection and prosecution. But the answer to lawful adult businesses should not automatically be exclusion.
Banks possess extraordinary economic power. They decide who can participate easily in the modern economy and who must fight to gain access to it. That power must be exercised responsibly.
The adult entertainment and glamour industries should not receive special treatment simply because they are controversial. They should receive fair treatment. That means individual risk assessment. It means proportionality. It means transparency where legally possible. It means meaningful explanations. It means accessible complaints procedures. And it means regulators continuing to challenge blanket de-risking where it is not justified by genuine evidence.
The issue is ultimately larger than pornography. It is about a principle that should concern everyone: Can a private financial institution effectively decide that a lawful citizen or lawful business is too socially controversial to participate fully in the economy?
If the answer is yes, then we need to understand exactly where the limits are. If the answer is no, then banks, regulators and lawmakers must ensure that "reputational risk" does not become a polite euphemism for financial exclusion.
A modern democracy can protect people from crime without making them choose between their profession and their bank account. It can demand rigorous financial controls without demanding moral conformity. And it can recognise the legitimate risks associated with the adult economy without treating everyone who works within it as inherently risky.
The challenge is not to make banks comfortable. The challenge is to make the financial system fair. Because once banking becomes conditional on being considered respectable, the question is no longer simply who gets a bank account.
The question becomes: Who gets to decide what respectable means?
Editor & Photographer
Struthers
Eugene Struthers
