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In December 2018 Save Our Bank provided the Co-operative Bank with a number of issues and questions raised by our supports in recent months. The Co-operative Bank provided the below responses in January 2019.

Save Our Bank: A member complains that he was told that he could not open an account for a voluntary association because the bank only provides service if it’s a charity or registered company. The voluntary association does have a set of rules.

Save Our Bank Gathering 2018: event report

The 2018 Save Our Bank and Customer Union Gathering will take place on the afternoon of Saturday 24th November at The Federation, a co-operative working space in central Manchester.

We will have representatives from the Coop Bank and Unite The Union to address the meeting.

Sticking with the bank 

When we set up the Save Our Bank campaign in 2013, the rescue deal brokered by The Co-operative Group meant that private investors were taking a majority stake in the bank, removing it from co-operative control. Our fear was that this change in ownership would threaten the bank’s world-leading ethical policy. We thought that would be a big step back.

The Co-operative Bank has released its full results for 2017.

This shows a loss of £140m, compared with £477m the previous year.

(The loss was offset by a gain from recapitalisation and restructuring during the year of £356m)

The CET1 ratio (a measure of how much raw capital the bank has to fall back on if things go bad - a measure regulators are very interested in) went up from 11% to 24.7%.

Prime current account holders (paying in £800/month on average or more) went down from 664,000 to 648,000 - a loss of 16,000.

Address to Customer Union members from Paul Lawler of the Co-operative Bank

Paul Lawler of the Co-operative Bank addresses Customer Union members from Save Our Bank on Vimeo.

Should the Customer Union accept the deal agreed by the Co-op Bank with its investors to provide £700m capital funding?

This vote is now closed

(from 5pm Sunday 12 November).

We will announce the result at the General Meeting of the Customer Union for Ethical Banking in Manchester on 18 November

The International Co-operative Alliance describes how a co-operative is at least partly owned and controlled by its members. The Co-operative Bank has never had members, but it used to be owned by The Co-operative Group, which does have members. Now the Co-operative Group has almost completely withdrawn from the bank, we want to see progress - towards bank customers having more say and more ownerhsip.

The Co-operative Group has sold its remaining stake in Co-operative Bank. Here is our view on what this means.

With the sale of the Co-operative Group’s 1% stake in the Co-operative Bank, the last remaining link between the bank and its former owner has been broken.