Welcome to this March newsletter of 2025 from the Customer Union for Ethical Banking, the independent union for customers of The Co-operative Bank.
Now that the Co-operative Bank is back in mutual hands, under the ownership of the Coventry Building Society, we’ve got a new logo, web address and email.
We’re looking forward to meeting with staff from the Bank and Building Society at our next quarterly engagement meeting soon.
In the meantime, the Co-op Bank has released its 2024 financial results and its annual Sustainability Report. Below we’ll take a look at what’s inside.
Co-op Profits down, mortgages up
The Co-op Bank this month released its 2024 financial results, reporting £116.2m in pre-tax profits in 2024, down from £120.9m in 2023. This was described as “in line with company expectations”, reports CityAM. Coventry Building Society also reported a fall in profits. However a high point was a major boost in mortgage applications to the bank, which grew by 50% in 2024. According to CityAM, the bank credited the move to “simplifying its IT infrastructure, which allowed for faster responses and larger loans.”
2024 Sustainability Report released
The bank’s 2024 Sustainability Report also came out this month. It’s a 51-page account of the bank’s progress on its Ethical Policy pillars of People, Planet and Communities (about the same length as last year). In its accompanying press release, the bank is “warning consumers” that one of the most important things that they can do to reduce their own environmental footprint is to switch to a green bank.
“According to MotherTree, switching to a Co-operative Bank current account from the least planet-friendly UK bank can reduce the carbon impact of an individual’s money by 86%,” the bank says. “Not only that, but a current account with The Co-operative Bank generates the smallest carbon footprint from any current account available from a UK high street bank.” This cites an analysis from MotherTree, an organisation that aims to “make it effortless for you to choose greener options in life.”
It’s good to see the bank continuing to shout about its climate credentials as the only certified fossil-free bank on the UK high street, especially during a time in which others are watering down their climate goals.
Seven businesses declined for Ethical Policy reasons
The bank turned away 7 businesses because of conflicts with its Ethical Policy in 2024, compared to 9 in 2023. These included:
- Human rights (3): one company selling arms “into regions with oppressive regimes”; one company involved in the supply of indiscriminate weapons, and one “trading in an industry that is causing social, economic and environmental problems in developing countries” were turned away.
- Climate change (2): two businesses working in the oil and gas sector and breaching the bank’s climate commitments were declined.
- Animal welfare (1): one business was turned away for failing to meet the bank’s “expected standards of animal welfare” (although we don’t know in which industry).
- Irresponsible gambling (1): One business was declined for failing to protect customers engaged in gambling activities.
It’s a crucial point of difference for the bank that it reports on businesses turned away as a result of its ethics. In some areas we would like to see more details reported, and some of this wording makes us curious about the bank’s thinking. (It’s not against the bank’s Ethical Policy to supply military equipment into “regions with oppressive regimes”, but to the oppressive regimes themselves.) This underlines the reasons we would love to see the bank return to having its Ethical Policy decisions audited!
Will Coventry Building Society return to auditing the ethical policy?
After last year’s Sustainability Report, the bank said to us: “We accept the Customer Union’s challenge regarding independent review of our Ethical Policy screening and we want to reassure members of the Customer Union that we have started making some steps towards reinstating this and commit to providing more information when we are able to do so.”
The bank’s Sustainability Report doesn’t appear to include any further information on this very welcome commitment. One year on, we would like to hear more about the bank’s progress on this score, which seems more important than ever following the merger with Coventry.
We’ll be taking a look in more detail at the bank’s Sustainability Report in the coming weeks and will return to the subject in our next newsletter.
On Bluesky? Follow us there!
Since Elon Musk has ruined Twitter, we’ve switched over to Bluesky. If you have an account, come follow us! Even better, why not share your thoughts on this newsletter there and tag us.
New email and web addresses
In our last newsletter we announced that, with the Co-operative Bank back in mutual ownership, we'd be retiring the Save Our Bank name - in use since we started the campaign in 2013.
So we’ve given our website an update with a new logo - and a new address:
We also have a new contact email address:
We'll be sending from this address in future so please add to your safe senders list if you have one and watch out that our emails don't go to junk mail.
The old Save Our Bank web address and email addresses will continue to work.
Please do let us know if you encounter any problems with the new addresses.
That’s all for this month’s newsletter; thank you as ever for reading and supporting the Union.
With best wishes,
The Customer Union team
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