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Cooperative Bank
The Cooperative Bank is fairly unique in the mainstream banking sector for taking a thoroughly ethical approach to banking. This extends to their website which is one of the few to be entirely accessible to disabled browsers. The annual partnership report proudly displays the extent of the bank's social responsibility activities which have led to awards for sustainability policy and business commitment to the environment to name but a few. If ethical banking is your top priority, the Cooperative Bank must be your first port of call.
However, this does not mean the Cooperative bank cannot be innovative; for example their latest technology venture was a facility to use cash machines to top up mobile phone payment cards. Similarly, the Cooperative Bank was the first bank to launch an interactive TV service (on Sky back in 1996). There are innovative products too- they launched the first fixed rate credit card a couple of years ago too. If you're into internet banking you'll know the Smile.co.uk brand, which is the Coop's internet-only arm.
They have around 3 million UK customers, which marks the company as a middle-sized player, and has only 140 branches covering most major cities but not particularly convenient for everyone. To compensate for this there's a bizarre video-link kiosk service called Armchair banking. The company also provides business services particularly to the public sector.
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