Debanking Is a Confusing Nightmare and at Risk of Getting Worse

John Ghazvinian was helping his parents clear out their life savings and move to Portugal when their checking account at Citigroup Inc. vanished from his screen. As weeks and months passed, the bank kept it out of reach and refused to specify why.

Ghazvinian, the former director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Middle East Center, had stumbled into a Kafkaesque corner of the US financial system that has confounded customers, industry leaders and even President Donald Trump. The Oxford-trained academic couldn’t figure out what to do.

There’s often a dearth of information given to customers who unwittingly set off one of the ...