The U.S. Congress will hold hearings next month with the chief executives of major Wall Street banks as Democratic lawmakers step up scrutiny of the role lenders have played in helping struggling Americans recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, Reuters reported. The House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee will hear testimony from JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, according to a notice from the House of Representatives committee. The virtual hearings scheduled for May 26 and 27 could determine how much legislative and political risk the biggest banks will face through 2022, Jaret Seiberg at Cowen Washington Research Group wrote on Thursday. While the industry's image in Washington has improved since the financial crisis a decade ago, Democratic lawmakers have expressed skepticism that lenders are doing all they can to help Americans and small businesses hurt by the pandemic. They are likely to grill the CEOs on the industry's role in the small-business Paycheck Protection Program and ask them to address concerns, flagged by several congressional reports, that lenders dished out the cash to fraudsters and discriminated against some borrowers.
