Ethical current account alternatives to Co-Op Bank?

eskbanker

Anthorn wrote: »

So there are fees in addition to the £3 monthly account fee. Or aren't there?

I read it that they're effectively proposing to operate the same model as Santander 123 or other fee-charging accounts, i.e. there is a fixed monthly fee but additional fees are chargeable if you go into overdraft, etc.

Granted the first bit of text that you quoted gets quite close to implying that one fee covers everything but it doesn't explicitly go as far as saying the £3 would include all overdraft costs, for example, just that they're not going to levy 'excessive' charges.

eskbanker

theyellowlizard wrote: »

Well, I'd rather be with a bank who held no unethical investments at all - but my initial post above was making the point that there's really not a great choice of those at the moment. If, say, HSBC had an ethical account and I knew that none of my money was being invested unethically, I'd certainly consider that.

Well I'm not going to criticise your interpretation of ethicality but this does rather reinforce my post #4 above about how there are many subjective views about what 'ethical' actually means!

agrinnall

To reinforce the point about Co-op bank the current Amnesty Internation magazine has an article about how it has challenged the bank about it's lack of ethics in some of it's dealings. I'm quite doubtful if you'll find any bank that is truly ethical, the best option (but probably rather limiting) is perhaps a local Credit Union.

Anthorn

eskbanker wrote: »

I read it that they're effectively proposing to operate the same model as Santander 123 or other fee-charging accounts, i.e. there is a fixed monthly fee but additional fees are chargeable if you go into overdraft, etc.

Granted the first bit of text that you quoted gets quite close to implying that one fee covers everything but it doesn't explicitly go as far as saying the £3 would include all overdraft costs, for example, just that they're not going to levy 'excessive' charges.

Yes I spotted the word play regarding "excessive" charges but I didn't refer to it in case it flew over everyone's head. However it's relative to what amount an excessive charge is seen to be. Some people might regard the monthly cap of £50 on top of the £3 per month account fee excessive. One wonders what the "excessive" charges would be without the £3 per month account fee.

eskbanker

Anthorn wrote: »

Yes I spotted the word play regarding "excessive" charges but I didn't refer to it in case it flew over everyone's head. However it's relative to what amount an excessive charge is seen to be. Some people might regard the monthly cap of £50 on top of the £3 per month account fee excessive. One wonders what the "excessive" charges would be without the £3 per month account fee.

The £50 sounds largely hypothetical as a cap on unarranged overdraft charges anyway, given their stance that

We do not offer an unarranged overdraft on this account and will not pay items where there are insufficient funds

so running up anywhere near £50 of unarranged overdraft charges, even at 18% EAR, would seem unlikely when they'll bounce attempted transactions (where practical, subject to online v offline cards, etc)