A group of concerned customers set up the Save Our Bank campaign in 2013 to try to keep the Co-operative Bank true to its co-operative principles and retain its ethical polices. In 2025 its acquisition by the Coventry Building Society will hopefully bring this dream into reality.

In the 1990s, The Co-operative Bank had found financial success and a high profile by positioning itself as an ethical alternative to the UK’s big four high street banks. Unusually for an ethical brand, it did this through hard-hitting TV and cinema adverts accusing the other banks of funding polluting companies or land-mine manufacturers.

In this way it had become an important agent both for driving change in the banking sector, as well as for driving awareness of ethical consumer choices more generally.

In October 2013, as news was breaking that the Co-op Bank had hit financial difficulty and that majority ownership was passing to a group of US hedge funds, Ethical Consumer was just completing one of its quarterly board meetings in Manchester. Media stories and commentators were beginning to gloat over what they speculated would surely be the end of all this annoying ethical banking nonsense.

Ethical Consumer directors after the meeting, however, began to mull over an alternative plan.

If we felt that an ethical brand of this significance was worth saving, maybe others did too? The next day, Ethical Consumer set up a campaign, emailing its readers and sending out a press release saying 'Don't panic and stick with Co-op says Save Our Bank'.

Slightly to our surprise the story was picked up by The Guardian and others, and within a couple of weeks we'd signed up more than 10,000 Co-op Bank account holders - including some major charities and campaigning organisations - to our email list.

A run on the bank?

Whilst others were calling on people to close their accounts, as this was surely the end of the bank as a real alternative choice, the Save Our Bank Campaign, as it became known, emerged as a key voice calling for people to stay put for now and fight for ethics.

Although we never really imagined that this part of the campaign had had any real impact, it turned out that it might have done.

Quite by chance in 2022 we met someone who had been one of the Bank's directors in 2013. Throughout those weeks in October, they were holding daily calls to track account closures - fully expecting a run on the bank of the kind that had happened with Northern Rock five years previously. And although some accounts were closed, the much feared run never occurred.

It appeared that Co-op Bank customers were somehow more 'sticky' than those of other banks and some people believed that the campaign and ethics had been a factor.

Setting up a Customer Union

In 2014, as the dust began to settle, Save Our Bank campaigned for the Co-op Bank to stick to its ethical policy.

Again, somewhat to our surprise, we were welcomed into meetings with key directors of the bank, for us to make our point. And when the “refreshed” ethical policy was launched in 2015 it was, as we had asked for, a strengthened rather than weakened version of what had gone before.

As it became clear that a wider campaign around ownership could take years, we came up with the idea of setting up a democratic Customer Union. And at the end of 2015, we launched a crowdfunder to ask for help in setting up this novel arrangement. This not only raised £30,000 (double the target), it also attracted over 1,000 people to become its first members – making it quite a large co-operative society and viable in the short term at least.

Growing into the role

In the following years, guided by formal consultations with its members now, the Union performed three main functions.

Every time the press leaked stories that the hedge funds were in talks to sell the bank, the Union would remind both buyers and sellers that if it wasn't a good ethical fit (which it often wasn't), customers might walk away, making the right price highly uncertain.

Every time the bank made cost-cutting measures and failed to think through the ethical consequences, we would campaign for them to think again. Most dramatically, this occurred when 'de-risking' overseas accounts led to the threatened closure of human rights groups in Africa and the Middle East.

Finally, the Union performed detailed analysis and assistance when the ethical policy came up for review.

As time went on, it became clear to both the Customer Union and the Bank that formal quarterly meetings would be useful to keep each other updated about what was coming down the line. Again, learning from trades unions, we signed a formal recognition agreement that set the parameters for these meetings and other communications in 2019.

The surprise of Coventry

When the proposed link up with Coventry Building Society - in many ways the ideal new owner – was first announced in December 2023 – we were in equal measures both surprised and delighted.

But, when we explained to our members that we couldn’t really take credit for the merger, we were told that maybe it was many of these things the union fought for which made it such an attractive purchase for Coventry in the first place.

Of course, much of the heavy lifting in Saving the Bank was done by staff internally – fighting to hold on to good elements, or simply by making the whole thing work better.

But the Customer Union, with support from Ethical Consumer and BankTrack, was there. And, who knows, the model we used might be useful elsewhere in the future too.

The Customer Union is still active in keeping up the pressure on the Bank to lead and campaign on ethics. Co-op Bank account holders are welcome to join, and now Coventry account holders are too.