The Co-operative Bank, whose roots go back to 1872, is a full-service retail player in the United Kingdom commercial banking industry. It offers a full range of banking services, including on-line banking, and is an innovator in the field of sustainability reporting. Using sophisticated financial value analysis methods, the bank reports not only shareholder and stakeholder value created but also an analysis of the direct contributions that ethical and ecological positioning has made to the company's profitability.
Innovation
"Customer led, ethically guided" is the motto of Co-operative Bank, tagged as one of the fastest growing banks in the United Kingdom. Individuals and businesses enjoy traditional banking services coupled with a clear stakeholder-developed ethical policy to guide all decisions and services within the bank. They will not invest in any government or business which fails to uphold basic human rights or in any business whose core activity contributes to global climate change through the extraction or production of fossil fuels.
After consulting with the Refugee Council and Refugee Action, the bank decided to offer accounts to refugees and to support a dispersal program by promoting positve integration in communities. They then made a significant difference in raising awareness of the issues realting to third world debt cancellation and the negative effects of these historic debts on the lives of people in the world's poorest nations. On the homefront, bank employees have a "dignity at work policy" and family friendly policies which govern their individual rights and responsibilities in the workplace.
In 1997, Co-operative Bank began to showcase its efforts in a sustainability report known as the "Partnership Report" which analyzed the direct contributions that ethical and ecological positioning has made to the company's profitability. Since that first report, the number of customer accounts has risen by 30%, primarily in the area of loan and savings account customers who join and stay for ethical reasons.
"The analysis of this value is extraordinary for its effort to link ethical, social and environmental actions to financial results in terms of costs, revenues and growth," said Chris Laszlo, author of "The Sustainable Company". "It has also introduced new green accounting measures and has undertaken extensive surveys reaching two million customers in 2001."
Impact
The bank's Co-operative Financial Services Sustainability Report (CFS) won its third award when it was recently judged "Best Sustainability Report" at the European Sustainability Reporting Awards, following a similar win in the UK. The CFS Sustainability Report provides an open and honest account of how CFS seeks to deliver value to its partners in a socially responsible and ecologically sutainable manner. The impact of ethics on the profitablity of the bank has been an increase to over a third with 34% of its £132 million in profits in 2004 attributed to its ethical and ecological sustainability policies, according to figures released in May 2005.
Inspiration
"Our customers expect us to rigorously police our ethical stance and so we not only look into the activities of a would-be customer but also the supply chains in which they are involved," said Simon Williams, Director of Corporate Affairs at Co-operative Bank. "When we launched our ethical stance back in 1992 its initial appeal was very much to individual customers who wanted to know what happened to their money whilst it was in the bank. Now, 13 years on, 36% of personal customers and a quarter of the bank's corporate customers join us precisely because we are prepared to turn away certain sorts of business."
The World Inquiry editorial team edited this profile from the original submission of the interviewer or other source. The views expressed do not necessarily represent Case Western Reserve University, the Weatherhead School of Management or the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit. More >>
