Customers of The Co-operative Bank will have recieved the following message by email or by post over the last week. We at Save Our Bank are pleased to see the bank finally communicating with its customers directly about the difficulties it has gone through, and pleased to see the organisation's values and ethics given some prominence. However, the vague wording of an engagement "around what’s important to you going forward" is not enough to address our concerns that a weakening of the bank's Ethical Policy could be proposed. We urge you to write to the bank to share your concerns in advance of the consultation.

 

Subject: A personal message to smile customers from our Chief Executive

Date: 27 February 2014

Dear ________

I wanted to write to you personally to thank you for standing by us during some of the most difficult times in our history. Whilst we still have some challenges ahead, I now want to update you on the progress we have made. 

I am pleased to say that we have strengthened both our capital position and our management team. We have also put in place a business plan which we intend will restore us to longer-term sustainable profitability over time. This means that we are now able to look forward and begin to reshape our business around what’s important to our customers. 

For over 140 years the ethics and values of The Co-operative Bank have set us apart and I’m proud to say that these ideals are now enshrined in our constitution. We would like to build on this heritage and want to do this in partnership with you. As such, this spring we will be engaging with you around what’s important to you going forward. 

I would also like to reassure you that we remain focused on providing great customer service and meeting your day-to-day banking needs. We are committed to delivering products and services to make it more rewarding and easier to bank with us. We will improve our online banking service and our mobile banking application as well as providing exclusive product offers for existing customers. 

Whilst delivering our plan remains challenging, I hope I have given you a sense of some of the steps we have taken both to strengthen the business and begin to reward the faith you have shown us. Thank you once again for your loyalty and for banking with The Co-operative Bank. 

Yours sincerely

Niall Booker
Chief Executive, The Co-operative Bank