Ethical Banking

I spent a couple of years working for a Fair Trade Coffee roastery and it is there that I picked up a lot of ideas about business ethics. There is a key group of consumers, especially in Western Europe and North America, who try to make responsible choices that help rather than hurt society and the environment.

Most of those choices have to do with consumer goods, but increasingly the ethical priority is being extended to investments and even financial services. The company that I was working for was a worker co-op. I am still indirectly involved as an investor.

Co-operativeBank.co.uk offers people the chance to have an ethical bank account. I would say that the question of ethics is most important for a savings account because when you have a large balance in an account a bank is making investments with that money. Some banks could be involved in awful things like blood diamonds.