Co-op Bank opens more accounts as scandals envelope big banks

Co-op Bank opens more accounts as scandals envelope big banks

Created on Wednesday, 17 October 2012 12:45

 

 

 

 

The Co-operative Bank is fast gaining new customers in the UK as people turn away from high street banking giants.

More than 100,000 people opened new accounts with the Co-op over the summer as more banking scandals were revealed.

The bank said it had seen a 43% rise in the number of people switching compared with last year, although this figure reached 90% at the peak of the problems besetting the big banks.

 

Few of Britain's big shareholder-owned banks escaped scandal this year. Barclays was fined for fixing Libor, a key wholesale lending rate, while NatWest and others suffered computer failures that affected millions of customers. HSBC and Standard Chartered fell foul of American regulators.

 

All the big banks continue to receive thousands of complaints about the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI), while the regulator has expressed concern about the sale of "packaged" bank accounts, for which customer pay a monthly fee.

 

Robin Taylor, the Co-op's head of banking, said: "Feedback from customers who have recently switched has shown that the instigator for them was a desire to have a bank they could trust, underpinned by a responsible approach to banking and an ethical policy that directs who the bank will and will not finance."